"Kill Move Paradise" at Shotgun Players

Shotgun Players production photo by Robbie Sweeny

One of the things I have missed about blogging is getting to write about my "home" theater, the Shotgun Players, where I am still a member of the board. And I've been looking forward to Shotgun's current production of James Ijames's Kill Move Paradise ever since last season, when they produced Ijames's play White and did Kill Move Paradise as a companion staged reading.

Unfortunately, that was right around the time my blog and I fell off the edge of the universe, so we don't have a way to reflect my feelings then versus now. Oops! Suffice it to say that White was a spectacular, if somewhat flawed, investigation of privilege and cultural appropriation as manifested in race and gender and all sorts of other dimensions of society. I'm glad Shotgun decided to bring this fully-staged production to life this year, as it does much more justice to the material than the reading could.

The Play

We start with a very plain, empty room that looks like a catch basin for all the sewers of the universe, but very clean, almost sterile. Then one by one a series of young African American men arrive and have to come to grips with how they got there and why. It's not too much of a spoiler to say this place is a kind of limbo, and each of the men has arrived because of being killed for no good reason.

As each one begins to fathom his fate, he also begins to note the fourth wall, behind which is an audience, and we all become part of the production, to one degree or another. At some level each member of the audience gets to decide how much to interact, which is an interesting part of the play.

So the play explores both the rash of premature, violent deaths of young black men and the relationship of those men to the rest of society: those of us who observe, but might not act. There is also quite a wonderful element of the play that explores how these men assist each new arrival, as each goes through various stages of awareness ad grieving.

And in the background is an old computer printer that occasionally burps out a few more entries to an ever-growing list: a roster of these men that the first character, Isa, reads aloud to great effect.

All in all it's a rather simple story, but profound and moving.

The Production

The first thing I thought of when I saw a picture of the set for this play was how completely it had transformed the Ashby Stage's performance space. It's almost entirely unrecognizable: starkly white, smoothly curved, and almost unornamented. So, big kudos to set designer Celeste Martore for capturing the necessary aspect of the inescapable sump of the universe! Stephanie Johnson's lighting makes a lot of mood changes possible within the simple space, along with Theodore J.H. Hulsker's video effects and Elton Bradman's sound design (assisted by Dani Chaparro). This plain, white space contains much more than it initially seems.

And as each actor enters the space in turn, we get treated to four different iterations of a young man having to adjust to the realization of where he is and why, with the emotional upheavals that accompany that. And each in turn must also deal with the fact of being observed, causing the audience to think about how they are affecting the actors, the play, and the characters. It's quite fascinating, often subtle, and both disturbing and delightful to watch.

In their turns, Isa (Edward Ewell), Grif (Lenard Jackson), Daz (Tre'Vonne Bell), and Tiny (Dwayne Clay) captivate us in different ways. Each brings something unique to his experience and ours. I can't go into it much without ruining it, so I'll just say that it is remarkably moving and thought-provoking to watch what all of them, individually and collectively, go through in the course of a relatively short show. Director Darryl V. Jones does a terrific job of making sure we see all four of the characters as fully-differentiated individual, yet inextricably bound together by something they cannot change.

Bottom Line

This is not a show that's going to leave you jumping for joy. But it is deeply affecting. I found it has stuck with me now for days (despite my lack of writing about it!). The performances are difficult yet wonderful, and the show overall is well worth seeing. Bring your friends and talk it over, either in the post-show discussion (after every performance) or after you leave. But you will have things to discuss.

The show has been extended to August 11th, so you still have three weekends to see it. And you should. Bring friends. You won't regret it.