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Riz AhmedsThe Long Goodbyestarts with a downcast eye, so close to the camera that its out of focus.
His first lines are murmured.
Even after he meets the cameras gaze, its clear hes not sure he wants to be doing this.
All through the show, his spoken refrain is:Do I belong here?
The whole time Ahmed seems utterly alone, speaking into his phone, to us.
Occasionally a shadow double shudders at the edge of the frame, like a figment of imagination.
Ahmed is ambivalent about all this showmanship, though.
If you rattle your cage, he says, you draw attention to it.
Are all his rhymes and stories just content, to be bought and sold?
Is it just more press for white supremacy?
Every moment of the show is confident enough that it can threaten to discard itself.
Look at this beautiful thing Im making, he says.
Its precious enough that it might not be for you.
Hes trying to tell their stories back to them to keep them alive, he says.
No one is allowed to come, no one can watch, no one is recording.
I wonder if Ahmed would agree.
But the dead would have seen, and been grateful.
The Long Goodbyeis streaming on demand via theBrooklyn Academy of Musicuntil March 1.
