Two Philly plays examine vicious cycles of violence

Thirty minutes earlier and they would have heard the shots. Leaving their rehearsal space last month and heading home, the actors might have rounded the corner at 52nd and Market Streets and seen the victim, a girl of 11, wounded and struggling.

This was no theater piece — it was real life, all too raw, all too immediate, all too tragically familiar.

“It’s the same situation — a little girl was shot by a stray bullet — the same thing that happens in the show,” said LaNeshe Miller-White, executive director of Theatre in the X, which runs its free production of Zooman and the Sign from Aug. 17-20 at Malcolm X Park in West Philadelphia.

Under the direction of Ozzie Jones, the actors had already been digging deep into their emotions, but the shooting just around the corner from their rehearsal space at the Painted Bride Arts Center brought all those emotions to the edge.

Zooman and the Sign is one of two plays staged this month that focus on violence and its aftermath — for the victims, for the community, and for the perpetrators, generation after generation.

The other play, Letters From Our 6 x 8, by local playwright Muhammad Bilal Islam, is built on correspondence between a grandfather and father, both incarcerated for life, and a grandson, the third generation to be incarcerated. Produced by ChildhoodsLost Theatre Group, it runs Aug. 24-27 at the Proscenium Theatre at the Drake in Center City.

“It’s basically about a cycle of incarceration that needs to change,” Islam wrote in an email. “The old sayings of ‘Like father like son,’ or ‘He’s just like his father’ or ‘A chip off the old block’ — those sayings sometimes affect those hearing them and sometimes those sayings make a person.”

There’s “more to the story,” Islam wrote, “but the plot is [about] changing a cycle of ‘like father, like son,’ that’s very much a fact in the Black community.”

Violence and its aftermath are at the center of Zooman and the Sign, the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller Jr. Fuller, who was born in Philadelphia, graduated from La Salle University, and passed away Oct. 3. He won an Obie Award for Zooman, set in Philadelphia in 1979.

“Zooman is trying to shoot another person and a stray bullet hits” and kills a 12-year-old girl, Miller-White said.

Fortunately, the girl shot around the corner from the group’s rehearsal space at the Painted Bride Art Center survived.

When Zooman kills a 12-year-old girl on a street crowded with neighbors, the community clams up. Everybody knows who did it, or at least has a good guess, but no one will say anything.

“That’s the elephant in the room when it comes to community violence,” Miller-White said. “There is a big turmoil about community and police interaction. When it comes to quelling community violence, it’s a big part of the conversation.”

There’s a natural reluctance to speak up, due in part to fear of retribution, but also because, she said, some interactions between the Black community and the police don’t go well.

In the play, the father’s anger is palpable, said Miller-White, who plays the girl’s mother. The father feels betrayed by his community — a community that saw the crime but won’t help solve it. He erects a sign calling for justice. He accuses his neighbors of being cowards.

“The neighbors start to threaten the family, saying [the sign] makes the neighborhood look bad,” but the father won’t take it down, Miller-White said.

Beyond the play, “there’s a constant conversation about community violence, and we thought it was perfect to bring that conversation to the forefront” she said.

That’s why, she said, each show is followed by a talkback. Philly Truce, a group of young people trained to mediate conflict, will host the first round on Aug. 17 and 18. UrbnSEEK, an organization that designs charitable events, will bring Forget Me Knot Children and Youth Services to the play’s Aug. 19 and 20 shows. Forget Me Knot runs a group home and emergency shelter for youth.

Miller-White first acted in Zooman when she was in college, not too much older than Zooman, who is 15. This time around, decades later, as she works with young people as executive director of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, she hears Zooman’s monologues about his life and struggles in a different way.

“When I read it in college, it didn’t occur to me: Zooman is 15 — he really is a kid himself,” she said. “Zooman has been a victim of the system his whole life.”

“Zooman and the Sign,” Theatre in the X, Aug. 17-18 at 7 p.m. and Aug. 19-20 at 5 p.m. at Malcolm X Park, 5100 Pine St., Phila. Bring your own chair. Rain location: Holy Apostles & the Mediator Episcopal Church, 260 S. 51 St., Phila. 484-326-2596 or theatreinthex.com.

“Letters From Our 6 X 8,” ChildhoodsLost Theatre Group, Aug. 24-27, The Proscenium at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila. ChildhoodsLost Foundation.org.

Check with the theaters for COVID-19 protocols. For information on other local events, visit inquirer.com/things-to-do-philly