Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The Spot

Reviewed by Wanda Sabir

“It goes back to when life first began…all life began at the watering hole. …. and this is where evolution has taken us: churches, fast food cardiac arrest pit stops and an endless supply of liquor stores. The Africans used to say: “Before the white man came we had the land and they had the bible. Now we have the bible and they have the land.”
--Homeless Man

I left the San Francisco Black Film Festival’s Award’s night last month feeling really happy as I headed for Recovery Theatre’s The Spot in its final performance at St. Boniface, located in the heart of the Tenderloin on Golden Gate and Jones Street in San Francisco. The streets were quiet that evening compared to just days earlier when a young man was killed and drunken or otherwise inebriate denizens toyed with the idea of entering the church for the play, then decided not to. I found a parking spot just across the street, and when walked in, the director and playwright Geoffrey Grier was speaking as I spotted my friend.

I was so happy that I hadn’t missed the last performance of the play I’d been trying to get to for over two years? Just after Shabaka made his acceptance speech, I eased on down Florida to my car and headed over to Golden Gate where I found a parking spot just across the street from the church where Marvin X hosted his Black Arts and Poetry Festival a few years ago. I had no time to spare as I scanned the room looking for my friend and or a seat. Chokwadi waved her hand and I sat down next to her just as Recovery Theatre director and playwright Geoffrey Grier mounted the stage to open the show.

The theatre went black and we heard a voice telling us a story of seduction: James Brown’s “King Heroin” was speaking –heroin a master lover whose jones rode even the most stalwart ex-lover. It was hard to shake him, the promises so sweet, the lovin’ so good. It’s the same with his queen: crack, the poison of choice we find when its personnel take their posts at the Spot.

I’d never heard the song before, but this others that night provided eloquently a libretto for the characters whose lives we were to meet at The Spot. The music, which was on sale afterwards, added an extra dimension to the story as it unfolded like the first step in a 12-step process most characters hadn’t heard of or responded well to.

I’d just seen a film the day before at the SFBFF, “Transformations,” directed by Javier Molina, which reminded me of The Spot. Same scenario, folks stuck in a place where death or imprisonment are the only way out unless one finds a way to leave “the life of crime” behind. The Spot focused more on the trap of addiction, addiction to illegal and legal drugs. One often hears of how crack cocaine will make a mother sell her child for a hit, it also affects fathers the same way. One addict (Vinny Smyth)lets his child burn up in a car on one of San Francisco’s hottest days because he couldn’t stop chasing the high.

Another character, Lex, (Luchen Baker)was angry because his dad had had an accident that crippled him, the resulting pain and addiction to first legal, than illegal pain killers occurred when his insurance refused to approve his surgery. It’s a complex story which I think is the point of The Spot.

The stories of the people who find themselves pouring libations on Golden Gate and Leavenworth, Jones, or Taylor –and other such spots in urban settings, are often victims of a system in this country where depending on your zip code police services won’t respond to nuisance calls. A woman was having people sign a petition closing night to address this. It’s a place where one is not granted human status, so if one’s life is to have value, it has to come from within—there is no outward social reinforcement. Even the poverty pimps benefit from one’s destitution. No one wants the folks hanging at the watering hole to prosper.

The play opens with two men talking about the absence of places where black people can gather and celebrate. Call it redevelopment or urban removal, the result is the same, wastelands filled with wasted people, most of them poor black and male. Survivors of “the last lobotomy attempt,” a drunkard (Vernon Madera) with brimless hat and disheveled disguise says to no one in particular. He’s alone on stage— standing in the twilight he pulls out a flask takes a sip then pours a little for the ancestors.

“Before whites came, we had the land—they had the bible.” He says. “Now we have the bible and they have the land.” He stumbles off stage as two others—drug dealers this time, arrive early to claim the spot for a day’s business. The spot is near a liquor store. One of the men acts as security for the business –it’s early morning, and the day is threatening to be one of the hottest of the season for the second day in a row. When Mohammed (Doug Marshall) arrives with his two nieces he’s putting through school he thanks his friend and invites him into the store for a beverage.

The language here is beautiful. Grier told me that Vernon Madera who found himself homeless during this current run of the play, developed this character—the elixir in the magic potion, but on the mean streets of San Francisco and other mythic spots, there are no magic wands or fairy-godparents to ease the sorrow. And so the day goes, drug sales are slow. Old friends come by, customers who want a better deal, former addicts in recovery now, one of the men’s sons, and a man who is just out of a treatment center for a month.

This man brags about his son and how he’s clean 30 days, the rejoinder is why are you’re here if you are trying to change your life. The temperature rises and the activity on the corner increases, the OGs Geno ( Stefon Williams) and John (Darrin Westmore) are joined by Lex, a youngster, John’s son.

Lex shoots his gun in the air and a man dies. He is charged with murder or manslaughter, along with the death of the child in the car who isn’t his. Without a previous record, Lex gets ten years. It’s criminal the time he has to spend behind bars when an anger management class would have been a more positive intervention back when his dad got hurt, became disabled and lost his job.

After his girlfriend (Nicole Harley)is harassed by the guards when she visits, then stops visiting as much, the tough street savvy kid realizes just how little control he has over the situation he's in. He drops the street bravado he can't back up and decides to listen to the older men inside who assist his adjustment to prison life.

The prison scenes are realistic –drugged inmates, transvestites, players whose game is tired, and the indignity of the treatment of the visitors not to mention their wives or significant others. Also addressed is the mental illness among the prison population.

Grier’s writing is three dimensional, the characters live and breath. The spot is a place people call home when in fact it is a grave. Lex returns home to find everything different especially at the place of origin. His girlfriend is older and a lot wiser. His children are 10, his father is dead and he has to make some choices so that he can live.

The actors are marvelous, especially the young couple, the griot or sage and the two OGs who hold it down—until one of them returns home. One could see director Ayodele Nzinga’s hand in the production—especially the dialogue and the relationship layers between Lex and his dad and Lex and his girl, both in and out of prison.

The audience was receptive often singing along with the soundtrack. The Spot will be back continues through this weekend at The Next Stage, 1620 Gough St. @ Bush in San Francisco, Thursday, July 26 and 27. All shows at 8:00 p.m. For information call (415) 643-6011 or visit www.sfrecoverytheatre.org.

 

 

 

Review: The Spot is Hot
by Talmidge Sage‚ Jun. 07‚ 2007
www.beyondchron.org

SF Recovery Theatre opened their latest production of “The Spot” mounted at the St. Boniface Church Theater, 175 Golden Gate, dead in the heart of one of San Francisco’s most notorious killing zones. The event started with the classic James Brown ode to addiction, “King Heroin”, which emanating onto the streets of the Tenderloin waking even the most sedated. While the curious homeless ventured in to receive a cultural injection along with temporary respite from their life on the street, the police busied themselves with a drug sweep along Golden Gate Avenue. Those that chose the safety of a theatrical event were safe if only for a day as the next night a young man lost his life on the very same streets due to violence. Playwright and Crisis Intervention Director – Geoffrey Grier was heard to say “If the City were to support and enthusiastically embrace events such as ours, then perhaps with bright lights and a presence of large groups of art enthusiast roaming the streets instead of dope fiends and their suppliers then that young man might not have lost his life.”

People came none the less and left feeling enlightened and hopeful, it was a wonderful collection of people from all walks of life. Many came to witness SF Recovery Theatre’s “behind the scenes drama” being played out stage where an estranged Father and Daughter unknown to each other 's involvement in the same play joined Grier’s production at the same time and decided to stay. Come see what happens on stage and beyond, be amazed.

The Spot runs 6/8, 6/9, 6/14 and 6/15 all shows at 8:00pm
 

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Review_The_Spot_is_Hot_4589.html

 

The Spot:    by Tony Seymour.  June 19th, 2006.

We all know of the spot, we all grew up on the spot, its known as the place to be, the in crowd, the hangout.   It is from this spot that we dream of other spots we would like to be.   Every body at every spot wants to be at another spot than the spot where they are.   To take that concept and in order to bring it to life.  Playwright Geoffrey Grier brings all the characters from your corner spot onto the stage for a close up view. 

The Poster for the play says it all, one of the myriad street corner memorials from Richmond’s Iron Triangle to Oakland’s West Side, with flowers and candles and “RIP” & mylar balloons temporarily marking the spot where a life was vanquished, a far far cry for the descendants of the Egyptians who built timeless Pyramid’s lasting centuries.  Today’s death is but a momentary blip in history.

All my Children meets the Compton Theatre.   From an accapella beginning we are drawn into the street dialogue, as former homeless people and former big time dope fiends learn expression in another form besides passing the pipe.   A young ghetto youth slings crack from his corner perch, where the use of dope is the substitute for hope and in the process of that substitution, all hell breaks loose, and he youth is wrongly accused of murder.   This is a play that reminds one of the HBO series THE WIRE.   Where keeping it real is the key.   Keeping it real is what they do, with prison scenes replete with the roving mumbling talking to himself finger twisting Thorazine induced zombie walking catatonic and all the remnants of psychosis and all its ugly glory.   Accurate staging which draws the eye toward the action.    And characters that you hope remain on the stage and hopefully don’t want to interact with the audience directly!  

Considering the cast is composed of the addicted and the homeless, what Grier has accomplished is nothing short of a miracle.   The perfect alternative to crack life and all its unglory.   You have guidance counselors who have never acted, coming across like seasoned pros, and Youngsters, the male and female lead people were just flat out phenomenal, capturing all the nuances of young love and its financial perils and emotional turmoil.   However, as in any amateur production there were a few glitches, aka, the lighting man musta been drunk, he couldn’t focus on the actors who were speaking.   But aside from that, the overall show was something that would make any one of us burst with pride.

 

Tony Seymour is a freelance writer and poet - BIOGRAPHY

 

Tony Seymour was born in 1951 in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the University of New Mexico and the University of Hawaii. Soon after, armed with a B.A. in communications, Seymour embarked on a 5-year study of the Beat Generation. He met Bob Kaufman while working at City Lights Bookstore publicity department on Huey Newton & Ericka Huggins' book 'Insights & Poems" in 1973-1975. Thereafter he studied and hung out with Kaufman for three years. In 1976 Seymour initiated a wave of publicity for Kaufman, with publications in California Living Magazine, The Berkeley Barb, Players Magazine, and the Black Panther Party Newspaper. Seymour says, "You don't have to live during the Renaissance to study with the literary masters! Studying with Kaufman was a once-in-a-lifetime chance!"

Tony Seymour, © 2002 by Johnny AcePoems for Another Time, Evolution of a Soul: The Collected Works of Tony Seymour is in the collections of several libraries, including the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, the Benicia Library. Seymour's dramatic collaboration with Blake More, features excerpts from his book and More's poetry.

 


‘The Spot’

Review by Wanda Sabir,  SF Bay View

 

Left to right behind the couch: Patrick Foster, Ed Gilles. Stefon Williams, J.B. Saunders, Jean Panell and Doug Marshall; in front on the couch, l-r: Inez Adams-Foster, Keeley Williams, Dave Sonnier and Darrin Westmore

Many of us have literal or philosophical spots we return to for camaraderie, comfort, ease. The spot might be a barbershop, club or a literal corner – let’s say Third and Palou in Bayview – where liquor flowed freely, along with talk and introductions into criminal life.

These visitors leave “the spot,” often unwillingly, to spend time in prison or on other street corners, halfway houses or gravesites in Geoffrey Grier’s “The Spot,” a Recovery Theatre production now premiering Friday and Saturday through Feb. 4, 8 p.m., at the Buriel Clay Theater, African American Art & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St., San Francisco, (650) 438-3964.

Routine or habit, the spots which claim portions of characters’ lives reminded me of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth’s hands, used as tools for murder, and the difficulty she had in washing away the stains. “Out, spot!” she demanded to no avail.

Dave Sonnier and Ed Gilles

Some spots don’t wash out or away, as in the case of 19-year-old Lex, played by David Sonnier, a young man who is on his way to college when he tries to make some fast money to pay for tuition and loses his spot – a loss which costs him the love of a wonderful girl and an opportunity to be present in the lives of his children.

When he returns 10 years later to the literal and figurative spot where these seeds germinated, everything has changed. He finds that he cannot go back home to these wayward habits which cost him his life the first time.

The acting in this play is tight; Geoffrey Grier is a fine director who has an ability to create a synergy between professional and nonprofessional actors so that unless you know who’s an equity actor and who’s not, the cast’s seamless performance overall keeps you clueless. This is one reason I wanted to see “The Spot” even before I knew what it was about.

Geoffrey Grier

Recovery Theatre’s epic run of “One Day in the Life,” starring Marvin X, Grier and many other actors who have gone on to do big things, such as Wordslanger Ayodele N’zinga of Shakespeare in the Yard, is a theatre group which marries theatre arts and craft to health and recovery.

Recovery Theatre is similar to other theater projects, such as Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project, theatre for incarcerated women, and Soapstone, a program based on Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, co-founded by Professor Roberto Gutierrez Varela and the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, a project which uses theatre as an opportunity for victims to confront actor-perpetrators.

In the case of the Medea Project, theatre gives the women a way to clothe these alter-egos in flesh as character … give them a run, then, when the curtain falls, let them go.

The men in the Soapstone productions told me that this visibly difficult emotional work helped them heal, ask forgiveness from the women they hurt – something not necessarily the goal of all theatre experiences, but not a bad idea either. The same is true for Rhodessa’s work. At the end of the production, the women step out of character and let the audience know how far away they’ve moved from their “spots.” Visit http://www.usfca.edu/vpa/pa/community_outreach_soapsto.html; http://culturalodyssey.org/medea/.

I had the opportunity to have a cyber interview with theatre veteran Geoffrey Grier, who comes to the stage with a wealth of experience and natural talent as a musician, comedian and 15 years traveling worldwide as a martial arts performer. He appeared on “Nash Bridges” and in the film “Dog Fights” with River Phoenix. He has also played Huey Newton for the past five years in the longest running African American play about recovery; “One Day in the Life” by Marvin X.

Supporting his stage experience with such memorable roles in classic plays as Lord Montague in “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, Brother Boxer in “Amen Corner” by James Baldwin, Shylock in “Merchant of Venice” by Shakespeare, Mahomolo in “Homeland,” Macbeth in “Macbeth” by Shakespeare and numerous other productions.

Presently, Grier heads up the crisis intervention unit of Recovery Theatre, making full use of the seven years he spent as a one-on-one and group facilitator at a well-known treatment center in San Francisco. He holds a degree in psychology from San Francisco State University.

WS: How does “The Spot” fit into Recovery Theatre’s overall goals as a company?

GG: “This is probably about as close as I’ll ever come to giving birth and almost as painful. This particular piece is an evolution of San Francisco Recovery Theatre’s mission to meet people where they are, provide a medium of communication and deliver a message of hope, consequence and solutions.

“The original idea came to me as I was teaching a Black history class in the Bayview district of San Francisco. No matter what walk of life people came from, it seemed as though we always talked to each other in penitentiary vernacular.

“When I started looking at some of the underlying problems of communication, I started formulating the concept of ‘The Spot.’ Unlike some of the other message theater companies around, SFRT treats its work as a full theater production and includes novices in all aspects (as well as) the audience. The message delivered through the present work is an all too familiar story.”

Grier stated that the finished product was the result of a “spiritly woven” artistic process.

GG: “This cast was assembled of actors, clients in or out of treatment and facilitators, many of whom thought they were just providing some service when after closer inspection they began to deal with their own ‘demons,’ whether obvious or hidden. With respect to the location, I felt it essential to make this work available to the people and community where it takes place.

“If I could do it under a heavily underwritten grant, then those people most in need of an arena to air their grief could receive ‘therapeutic theatre’ treatment whenever they needed it. The African American Art and Culture Complex has been very supportive of our efforts to heal the community and enlighten those in the dark and has given us the needed space to present whenever they could.”

WS: Can you talk about casting and the use of professional and amateur cast members. How has that worked for the company?

GG: “While it is difficult working with actors as a rule of thumb anyway, when you add the component of theatrical naiveté while many people are still battling substance abuse, mental health, health or housing problems, it becomes a formidable task. I have found, however, that people in need find a real ability to relate to the actors’ ability to communicate and use it.

“Those that call themselves ‘actors’ have gained a new appreciation for life experience and have been able to authenticate characters that they previously couldn’t do (just through working next to professional actors and learning from them. The result of the interchange is mutually beneficial for both parties).

“This has been an intensely eye opening experience for the cast and can be translated to all audience members.”

WS: Have there been any pleasant surprises this run? If so, what have they been?

GG: “One of my client-actors is 70 years old and has been as dependable as the seasoned pros. This has given him a purpose and a reason to participate in his own destiny.”

“The Spot” is scheduled to have an extended run at the Next Stage Theatre on Gough. Call(650) 438-3964 for the details.