''A colored library''

A few days ago in the library, only for a small and lucky audience, we had the presentation of the play'' The colored museum.'' This was an excellente presentation adapted and directed by the teacher Paloma Valenzuela, who turned out to be an excellent director and guidance for young actors.

This work was premiered during the ACCAS festival (Association of Colombian-Caribbean American Schools) representing Saint Joseph School. The festival presented works by other bilingual schools in Santo Domingo and it was not competitive, just a friendly match to see how theater movement develops in the schools.

All performances were excellent, some of them were incredibly good. I was extremely surprised I couldn't avoid the temptation of filming the whole work. The video is not professional. No. It was filmed with my Blackberry. My intention was only have a record for our school history of everything happened that day and I think I did it. Give me your opinions.

 names of the actors in alphabetical order:

- Adrian Hernández

- Alexa Soto

- Cynthia Durán

- Daniela Benedetti

- Eduardo Méndez

- Hillary Quiñones

- Ivan Hernández

- Luis Germán Quijada

- Marie Ann Asunción

- Paula García

Director: Paloma Valenzuela

Before watching the videos, let's increase our knowledge and read something about this work. Some facts about the play, summary and description.

''The Colored Museum''

 Author: George C. Wolfe (1954- )

Type of Work: Play

Type of Plot: Satire; experimental

Time of Plot: 1980's

Locale: Various, including an airplane, a television set, and a living room

First Produced: 1986, at the Crossroads Theatre Company, New York City

First Published: 1988

Principal charactersMiss Pat, a flight attendantAunt Ethel, the host of a cooking showGuy, a fashion modelGirl, a fashion modelJunie Robinson, a soldierMiss Roj, a drag queenMama, a religious matriarchWalter-Lee-Beau-Willie-Jones, Mama's sonThe Man, a businessmanThe Kid, his younger selfLala Lamazing Grace, a singerNormal Jean Reynolds, a woman whose baby is an eggTopsy Washington, a hip young woman

 The PlayThe Colored Museum, as has often been pointed out, is not set in a museum, and none of its characters ever utters the word "museum." Instead, it is a series of eleven separate scenes or "exhibits" performed without intermission. Each has its own title, and each illustrates a different facet of African American life in the 1980's. In many of the scenes, characters speak directly to the audience, exhibiting different examples of racism and of surrender to victimhood. For example, the first exhibit, "Git on Board," is spoken by the smiling Miss Pat, a female flight attendant, delivering to the audience a version of the typical instructions given to passengers before an airplane takes off. However, Miss Pat is the flight attendant on a slave ship bound for Savannah, Georgia, and she instructs her passengers not to play drums or rebel, but to fasten their shackles and sing spirituals.

The second exhibit is "Cookin' with Aunt Ethel," a parody of a television cooking show whose star resembles a stereotypical Mammy character. Aunt Ethel demonstrates a recipe for "Negroes" that includes such ingredients as rhythm, attitude, and style. "The Photo Session" features a Guy and a Girl, models for Ebony magazine, who have internalized the values of materialism and consumerism. Junie Robinson, the titular "Soldier with a Secret" in the play's third scene, admits that he has killed some of his comrades in arms, believing that death in combat was preferable to the pain of oppression. "The Gospel According to Miss Roj," one of the play's most controversial exhibits, is spoken by a beautiful drag queen, who includes homophobia among the types of oppression she has faced. One of the funniest exhibits, "The Hairpiece," features two speaking wigs and challenges European-influenced ideas about beauty.

In "The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play," the longest scene, an urban African American family struggles with poverty and racism. Characters in this scene include Mama, her son Walter-Lee-Beau-Willie-Jones, his feminist poet wife, and the Greek figure Medea. "Symbiosis" features a successful businessman who tries to assimilate into white culture and put his younger self behind him, while "Lala's Opening" features an African American woman who adopts a fake French accent and manner, forsaking her own past. Normal Jean Reynolds, in "Permutations," is a young woman optimistically laying an egg. "The Party," the play's concluding scene, brings back characters from earlier scenes, who dance in front of projected slides that quickly summarize African American history. The scene is loud and energetic, with characters talking over one another, emphasizing the chaos and contradictions that make up the museum.

 Themes and MeaningsBeginning with the word "Colored" in the title, The Colored Museum announces its complicated relationship with the past. By 1986, when the play was first performed, the word "colored" was considered at best old-fashioned and at worst racist, and it would have made 1980's audiences quite uncomfortable. Its inclusion in the title signals George C. Wolfe's determination unblinkingly to confront African American history. The first "exhibit," "Git on Board," is about slavery, and other scenes address segregation, the loss of African religion, and the role of African Americans in the military. Wolfe calls upon African Americans to look closely at their history and to see the ways they have been limited by it, so they might find ways to move forward. He also calls upon white people to see clearly the evils of racism and oppression. His hope is that the attitudes displayed in the play will be regarded as museum pieces: unchanging exhibits of the past, rather than living moments or models for the future.

Another theme of the play is the role of African American literature in the development of the culture. In "The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play," Wolfe boldly makes fun of perhaps the best-known play by an African American writer, Loraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (pr., pb. 1959). Wolfe's Walter-Lee-Beau-Willie-Jones is a parody of Hansberry's Walter Lee, and Wolfe makes a mockery of Mama, Walter Lee's mother, who guides her family with wisdom and strength from her seat on the couch. The play also refers to other African American dramas, to the slave Topsy from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly (1851-1852, serial; 1852, book), and to the music of Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, and the Temptations. Wolfe has commented in interviews that he respects the literature and music he parodies, but just as it is time for African Americans to leave stereotypical attitudes in a museum, so it is time to retire the old forms of art and create new ones.

 Critical ContextWolfe was born in segregated Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1954, and he felt unwelcome at the integrated high school he attended, until he found his way to the school's theater department. He started college at Kentucky State University but completed his degree at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he wrote his first plays. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles and taught theater to inner-city children, experiencing for the first time the diversity of people and ideas that thrives in a major city. In the late 1970's, he moved to New York City. There, The Colored Museum opened at the Crossroads Theatre in 1986.

The Colored Museum was controversial from its opening. While many audience members were offended by the play's edgy satire, critics generally reviewed the play favorably, admiring Wolfe's wit and his courage in boldly pointing out ways in which both African Americans and whites were complicit in the oppression of African Americans. Many of these critics were white men, writing for important periodicals such as The New York Times, New York magazine, and The New Republic, and they praised Wolfe for the biting satire directed, in part, at them. An exchange of analyses in The Village Voice, a liberal New York newspaper, demonstrates the controversy surrounding the play: Thulani Davis, an African American critic and playwright, challenged the play as misogynist and reflective of self-hate, while critic Michael Feingold celebrated the plays's use--and abuse--of stereotypical characters. The controversy fueled ticket sales, and the play was a commercial success, as well as the winner of the Elizabeth Hull-Kate Warriner Award, presented by the Dramatist's Guild to the best play dealing with a social, religious, or political topic.

The play itself makes reference to earlier African American literature, saluting and moving beyond such important works as Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf (pr., pb. 1975) and Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982). In making satirical references to these and other works, The Colored Museum stakes out its own place in African American literature: indebted to earlier work, but making a deliberate break from it.

PS: I had to cut and edit all the videos to reduce the size for uploading them to this blog. Blogger allows to upload till 100 MB, but with the Internet we have here is almost impossible, so I had to reduce them. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I hope you enjoy this!!!! Thanks a lot!!!!!!!!