ABUSUA to Host “Black People Are Infinity”

ARTS & CULTURE

March 25, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 16

Black Student Union to Host “Black People Are Infinity”

Sierra Colbert

Senior Staff Writer

A few weeks ago, College second-year Imani Joseph read the line “Black People Are Infinity” while reciting a poem they wrote at an Afrikan Heritage House Soul Session. Since then, Joseph’s words have echoed all around campus on posters advertising this year’s Black History Month Ball. Hosted annually by the Oberlin Black Student Union, ABUSUA, the Ball will take place this Saturday from 8 p.m. to midnight at The Hotel at Oberlin.

College third-year and A-House Program Assistant Evyn Lundy explained that the ABUSUA team chose the line “Black People Are Infinity” as the event’s theme somewhat by chance. It was only after deciding to use a celestial theme that the team heard Joseph’s poem and thought it was perfect. Of course, to the event organizers, Joseph’s phrase does much more than simply call celestial images to mind.

“It’s really supposed to be a reminder that Black people are always here, Black people are resilient; we deserve to be noticed,” Lundy said. “And I feel like a lot of times there’s a lot of invisible labor of Black people — basically meaning that people don’t always directly see the work and the emotions and everything that goes into all of our work.”

College second-year and A-House Program Assistant Wyaé Stewart expressed a similar thought on the depth of this year’s theme, “Black History Month: Black History Year.”To Stewart, infinity means the lasting impact of Black community and culture.

“When you think about it, so much of our culture and … our life is brought into so many different societies,” she said. “And so many people adopt it and use it in their day-to-day lives, just emphasizing that our culture and everything that comes with us is beautiful and it’s infinite. It’ll last for generations to come.”

It is for this reason that the Black History Month Ball is not just another party. College third-year Jillian Sanford explained that, while it is an excellent place to have fun, it also serves a greater purpose.

“The Ball is a way to celebrate all the hard work Black students put in day in and day out at Oberlin, especially during BHM,” Sanford wrote in an email to the Review. “It is a celebration of our resilience and our dedication to making Oberlin a better space for those in our community.”

A large part of that celebration is, of course, having a good time. In the grand scheme of events going on during Black History Month, the ball stands out as one designed to bring everyone together in one space to enjoy an evening of music and community.

“There’s different kinds of events that are going on throughout the month,” Lundy said. “So different kinds of people will attend different events. If you’re interested in the arts, obviously you’re going to want to go to more arts-focused programming. So I think that the ball really serves as a space where we can all come together. [It] serves as a time for everyone to go, everyone to see each other, everyone to just have a good time.”

And the Ball promises to be just that. In addition to a change in venue See ABUSUA, page 13 College fourth-year Nasirah Fair struts down the runway at the Multicultural Resource Center’s most recent Black History Month event, the Black History Month Fashion Show, held on March 20. The BHM Ball will host students at the Hotel at Oberlin March 26.

Courtesy of Chemutai Ruto

Sadsack Mini-Series Premieres After Years of Development

Emerald Goldbaum

Sadsack, a television mini-series written and directed by College fourth-year Katie Friedemann, will premiere today. The first two episodes, the only ones filmed so far, will be screened at 7 p.m. in the Hallock Auditorium for Environmental Studies and they will be made available on YouTube and Vimeo. The semi-autobiographical show, a personal opus for Friedemann, follows J.B., a young woman who returns to her hometown after moving away to college, as she is forced to come to terms with a traumatic event from her past.

Friedemann began the writing process in March 2020, right after Oberlin students had been sent home due to COVID-19. With nothing else to do, Friedemann took the extended time away from school to write.

“It was just the perfect time,” Friedemann said. “I had nothing else to do but to sit and be reflective. This mini-series is what came out of it.”

Filming for the show began in November 2020 and just wrapped up a few days ago when the cast and crew shot the final background footage.

“This has been a very, very long process,” Friedemann said. “I had just the best team in the entire world who were just as dedicated to getting it done as I was, but that strain of time and very, very little resources was incredibly stressful.”

Friedemann describes the series as an examination of the main character’s trauma and how memories influence our present circumstances. She has always been fascinated by stories about small towns. When she watched Clerks, a movie set in small-town New Jersey, at age 14, she felt it was the first time she had seen movie characters who talked like her friends. That kind of writing inspired her as she tried to come up with realistic dialogue, especially as she began writing her own small-town characters like Rigby, a newcomer in town who works at a computer store and doesn’t know anything about J.B.’s past.

“I spent a lot of time asking myself, ‘What do these people actually sound like?’” Friedemann said. “The experience of Sadsack is just kind of being at home with your high-school friends after you haven’t seen them for a bit and just shooting the s**t and analyzing how messed up high school must have been for all of you. Once you can see it in hindsight, that’s kind of the experience of it.”

Friedemann has directed plays in the past, but this is her first experience filming a series.

“Working with all of these people, and dealing with these incredibly happy accidents, and finding things in my own writing that I had just never found before was amazing,” she said. “I got to work with these wonderful people who are so smart and so compassionate. This experience was so unlike a play, which is what I’ve directed to this point. This is something that I will have forever and it will live in its peak form forever. It’s just so nice to be able to look at it and say that we did this.”