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The secret buried deep at the heart of modern U.S. entertainment is the minstrel show.
Cut far enough into show business, your blade comes up covered in burnt cork.
Traditions met, melded, became conventions.
The first talking picture wasbuilt around it.
The audience, the show, the veryfactof the show have been weighed and found wanting.
Theres power in that but danger too.
A red curtain rises on a minstrel show.
BONES: Imma put on a show!
See, I tried to tell them a sad story.
Appeal to they sense of Emily.
TAMBO: They sense ofEmily?
BONES: They sense of Emily.
TAMBO: They sense ofempathy?
BONES: Empathy, yeah!
I tried to appeal to they sense of empathy.
But that aint work.
Sooooooooo Imma put on a different jot down of show.
Tambo tuts at Boness naivete.
You gotta deliver a treatise on race in America, he says, nodding wisely.
Even when Tambo gives his speech, though, the crux is still Black suffering.
Also,Obama!The audience laughs, but Tambo and Bones seem unhappy with that response.
Then the pair leaps forward in time to become modern-day rap superstars.
Butthatsnot the response they want either.
Laugh atthis;clap forthis.They dare you.
Tambo & Bonesis part of a satirical school that employs a Whos laughing now?
structure in which white theatergoers entertainment (and attendant laughter, responses, etc.)
provides both the subject and the medium of its critique.
She made separation observable as well as audible.
Tambo & Bones, however, fades in its coda in a way these other two plays do not.
There is no line between actor and character / between audience and actor.
The weight of those early minstrelsy images is also difficult to get over.
His purified Afrofuture keeps paling in the bilious light of the real past.
The third chunk ofTambo & Boneswas clearly written under Barakas star, governed by his fire.
Its a staggering moment, and revealing.
They wheel about, they turn about, they jump Jim Crow.
Tambo & Bonesis playing at Playwrights Horizons through February 27.
