Review: 'Hands Up' is mandatory listening

'Does it always have to be about race?"

In Hands Up: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments, Flashpoint Theatre's brutal world premiere about institutionalized racism in post-Ferguson America, you'd better believe it.

In 2014, the New York theater organization New Black Fest commissioned six playwrights to respond to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. These short monologues chronicle each author's encounters with the daily indecencies of racial profiling, stop-and-frisk, harassment, and casual racism inflicted by police, media, and society in general.

"Racism hasn't gone away," Brandon J. Pierce tells us while performing Nathan James' "Superiority Fantasy." "White people are just tired of talking about it."

Though humiliation at the hands of police and anger and frustration about Ferguson and subsequent incidents permeate all six works, each author delivers a brutally honest telling of his own experience.

Nathan Yungerberg's "Holes and My Identity" and Eric Holmes' "Walking Next to Michael Brown" both present nuanced responses.

Yungerberg was adopted by a white couple in Wisconsin, and, as an adult, he feels a dearth of preparation for the regular hostility inflicted on urban blacks. Actor Brian Anthony Wilson, a giant of a man, brings great sympathy to the piece, his size no shield against slights seen and unseen.

Holmes' story begins with a rhythm and blues fantasia of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson as a romantic hero reholstering his gun after listening to the calm reasoning of actor EZ Hernandez.

The band Ill Doots accompanies all six monologues, here amplifying the sense of terror, there providing light riffs that add humor to Holmes' tale of biracial solidarity with Michael Brown.

Director Joanna Settle modulates the tone of the evening with striking precision, most notably in Glenn Gordon's "Abortion." Unleashing Aaron Bell's best comedic instincts as a father writing a letter of life lessons to his unborn child, she turns it into a roaring, tragic piece of stand-up comedy. With deadpan timing and potent subtlety, Bell works the room with a skill that belies his youth.

Veteran actor Johnnie Hobbs Jr. lends his impressive skills to Idris Goodwin's "They Shootin! Or I Ain't Neva Scared," effortlessly shifting from musings about a bird trapped between two windowpanes to recollecting youthful indiscretions that could have turned tragic.

And rage finds voice in Dennis Allen II's "How I Feel," a middle finger of a piece aimed at the clueless who ask why it always has to be about race when there's a mountain of experiences that would otherwise be dismissed if it weren't.

Go. Listen. Hear.

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Hands Up: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments

Presented by Flashpoint Theatre Company through June 28 at the Caplan Studio Theater, 211 S. Broad St.

Tickets: $22-$25

Information: 267-997-3312 or www.flashpointtheatre.org

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