THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS
September 16, 2021 - September 22, 2021 • 15
Arts & Entertainment
Pg. 18
Theater pages 15, 17 | Film/TV page 16 | Jazz page 21
Your Stars
Broadway is back with ‘Pass Over’ Namir Smallwood and Jon Michael Hill
Jon Michael Hill in “Pass Over” on Broadway
(Joan Marcus photos)
By LINDA ARMSTRONG Special to the AmNews “Pass Over” hits a couple of milestones: Not only is it the first Broadway production to be staged since the pandemic’s shutdown, it is one of seven plays created by Black writers to be staged this season. Black female playwright Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Broadway debut will set her in the annals of theater history. This scorching, visceral drama demonstrates her empathy for the plight of Black men in the United States of America. Nwandu has a sense of their feeling targeted by the police, and their sense of hopelessness and redundancy in their everyday lives. This feeling of being powerless and being made to feel inadequate for just being who you are—a human being with the basic needs of shelter, food, feeling safe and seen—and what
happens to Black men when those basic needs are taken away. Nwandu bravely and thoroughly covers the issue of the brotherhood that Black men feel for one another and how they will continuously use the “N” word in everyday speech, but use it with a meaning of affection, dedication and friendship. She also recognizes the constant state of fear and trauma that Black men, who have known friends and family killed by the police, experience on a daily basis. Nwandu gives the audience a captivating story of true friendship and two men in pain, the pain of personal family loss caused by police brutality; the pain of feeling trapped and unable to simply leave a ghetto street corner, instead feeling that there is no recourse but to stay and endure racist police harassment. Their crime is being Black and alive, and that is not something they can or want
to change—nor should they have to. Nwandu stunningly gives us two men, Moses and Kitch, who live on a ghetto street corner and every day talk trash about what they would want to happen in their lives. They dream of a Promised Land, but also concede that it is not meant for Black men. Setting the scene in the future and the past, as far back as 1440, Nwandu allows her two characters to talk about all the cruelties that Black people have suffered, like being slaves on the plantation to living and dying in ghettos, murdered by police on a regular basis. Murders that happen so often, to so many of their friends and family, that they recall each person’s name and feel the sadness of each murder. Moses’ character refers to Moses in the Bible who led the Jews out of Egypt, but this modern-day Moses realizes very acutely that he does not have
the ability to lead anyone anywhere; he can’t even help himself. Moses and Kitch exemplify the indomitable spirit of the Black man. Although their lives are repetitive and depressing, they still try to dream. They still try to hope and share the things they would want in the Promised Land. They also find a way to share humorous exchanges, despite the desperation of their situation. There is a lot of profanity exchanged, but it’s real talk. As they talk of their deeply rooted feelings of despair and degradation, especially at the hands of white police officers, it is not surprising that when a white man comes on their corner they are leery. This man, who called himself Master, appears to be lost and is carrying a basket of food for his ill mother (a wolf in sheep’s clothing). He comes across as not meaning to cause See PASS OVER on page 19
