This weekend, Tech Theatre presented “Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities”, a play by actress, author and professor Anna Deavere Smith. The play uses a series of 29 monologues to chronicle the perspectives of people involved in the Crown Heights Riots that took place in Brooklyn in August 1991 and to reflect the identities and backgrounds of the members of two communities, blacks and of Lubavitch Jews. The riots were incited after a black child was hit by a Jewish man’s car, and a Jewish man was stabbed to death in retaliation. These events pitted the two groups against each other, turning the neighborhood upside down.
Callisto Cortez, a third-year Theatre and Electronic Performance Media major who played Roslyn Malamud, a Lubavitcher resident of Crown Heights, shared her experience developing the character. “This is the first show that I have done that is just monologue-based,” she said, “we did have a cast, but it wasn’t the kind of thing where people interacted with each other. So it was something new to me…it was me truly depending on myself…if I forgot a line and stuff like that. I had to go in and do a lot of repetition [in] memorizing my lines and finding out who I was. Sometimes it’s helpful when you have other people, to help you do that. But with this it was me, and I had to really make sure that my piece delivered so that I could help other people with all of the emotional impacts that this show has. All of our different stories come into one.”
Cortez’s statement reflects one of the primary themes of the play. In bringing together the perspectives of residents of Crown Height’s communities, despite the differences between them, Smith allows the two communities, and the individual identities represented within them, to connect. In doing so, they each add a level of depth to a story that reflects their collective struggles. Angela Davis, an author, activist and scholar who makes an appearance in the play (performed by Darnishia Slade), makes a profound point with respect to this idea. She explains that she feels very “anchored” in the communities that she belongs to, but elaborates on this metaphor. “The rope attached to the anchor needs to be long enough to allow us to move into other communities to understand and learn.”
Tech Theatre’s next production will take place in February. They will be producing “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” by Mark Medoff. The play takes place in Foster’s Diner in Hope, New Mexico, where customers and employees are shaken up after experiencing “a terrorizing examination their personal desires and dreams” when Teddy, an unbalanced veteran, resorts to psychological torture after holding everyone hostage. Keep an eye out for this and other productions on the Michigan Tech Events Calendar, at https://events.mtu.edu/, to stay tuned.
