Douglass Turner Ward's play "A day of Absence"
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Posted By: Victorio Loubriel on August 17, 2018 Since the Whitehouse cant seem to answer the question concerning the number of Black people working there, I have another theory.. Douglass Turner Ward, one of the founders and former Executive Producer of the Negro Ensemble Company produced a play “Day of Absence” What would the world look like if everyone that Donald J. Trump had ever disdained — the Mexicans and the Muslims, the nasty women and the failing journalists — vanished? How would a morning unfold if Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” suddenly turned up empty? If those we look down on disappeared overnight, how would we go on? That’s the question posed by Douglas Turner Ward’s “Day of Absence,” a “satirical fantasy” that kicked off the pioneering Negro Ensemble Company in 1965. Fifty-one years later, the company has revived it in a feisty, slapdash production at Theater 80 St. Marks, featuring several cast members who starred in the original version. In “Day of Absence,” the white residents of a Southern town wake to find all the black people gone. As shoes go unshined and babies unfed, the municipality devolves into chaos. It isn’t long before even the segregationist mayor is begging: “I’ll be kneeling in the middle of Dixie Avenue to kiss the first shoe of the first one ’a you to show up. I’ll smooch any other spot you request. Erase this nightmare ’n’ we’ll concede any demand you make, just come on back — please?” At one point several white racist towns people cant seem to locate their White friends and come to the conclusion and say; “They must have been secret niggras”.. A “reverse minstrel show,” “Day of Absence” is performed by black actors in whiteface, save for a white actor who appears as an announcer and a black actor who comes on in the end without benefit of cosmetics. Mr. Ward’s wit is scathing, if not exactly nuanced. There’s cruel humor in a white cop who goes crazy when he has no black men to assault and a Klan member upset that he wasn’t the one to drive the African-Americans out of town. If you enjoyed this article, Join HBCU CONNECT today for similar content and opportunities via email! |
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