Rites & Reason Theatre's production of "The Twelfth Tribe," presented this weekend, addressed a question political theater devotees have been asking themselves for years: Without the use of a dramaturge, can anything in a supposedly researched play be taken seriously?
Written by Alex Pudlin '04 and directed by Elmo Terry-Morgan '74 and Marsha West, the story recounted in "The Twelfth Tribe" is simple, but only deceptively so, for it introduces the complex mental state of those who must acknowledge religious and cultural traditions that are at odds with each other.
Born to a black Jewish family in Waterbury, Conn., Gerald (Maceo June '05) has a difficult time coming to terms with the conflicting identities of the two minority groups that provide him his heritage.
The ensuing action leads him on a continental walkabout, as the confused youth searches for people of his particular kind, or at least for a community to which he can relate - a quest that ultimately drives him insane.
Unfortunately, this brand of in-patient narrative, unified under a rubric of psychological analysis, is not just discouraging for its heavy-handed simplicity - it is dangerous. The issues at stake are important, but they are precarious enough that a thematic misstep could lead to serious misrepresentation.
Today, there are many members of the "twelfth tribe," a unique denomination of black Jews who trace their ancestry to one of the original lost tribes of Israel.
But Pudlin seems to forget that those in this sect have often been dismissed by society as being "crazy radicals" due to their public demonstrations that tout their religious beliefs. By presenting his audience with a portrait of a crazy, paranoid black Jew, Pudlin has successfully managed to confirm the stereotype - a dramatic device that, if anything, enforces the misconception.
Suffice it to say, the show's more lethal assortment of stereotypes doesn't end there. Gerald's parents, Rachel and Fred (Sara Griffin '04.5 and Tacuma Vanterpool), have been employed as metaphorical archetypes, signifying the conflicting ways in which African-American Jews attempt to reconcile their disparate identities.
This device, in the hands of a subtler playwright, would certainly have worked to illustrate the struggles faced by those born to more than one minority heritage. As the parents bicker over the loaded implications of their individual choices, however, Pudlin resolves the dispute with the most banal of cultural generalizations.
"When I had a son," says Fred to pacify his fuming wife, "I always imagined him running around, carrying the Torah, dancing the hora." The subtext here is obvious - that despite the denominational choices of his two parents, Gerald is, above all, Jewish. But can Judaism really be reduced to the tired signifiers of the Torah and hora dancing? Only so long as one subscribes to the patronizing ideology that cultural stereotypes can be overthrown with other, more lighthearted clichés.
Wisely, Pudlin has elected to incorporate comic elements into his dialogue. The audience is made privy to a few scenes in which Gerald, during his quest for identity, encounters Janie (Shatara Francisco '08), his whimsically narcissistic "first girlfriend," a truck driver (Terry-Morgan), who curtly advises the protagonist to steer clear of hitchhiking, and the Southern Baptist-like Nana Gertrude (Darshell Jackson), who, in her loud, reverential voice, beseeches him to leave "her kind" alone.
Though the audience reacted positively to such comic interventions, they were not spared the playwright's penchant for trite character sketches.
For all her charmingly naïve affectations, Janie glows embarrassingly at the premature thought of a wedding ring and remains a painfully unilateral and hackneyed representation of women. "What are the odds," exclaims Gerald in response to the trucker, completely discounting the religious affiliations of the inhabitants of Nigeria, Niger and Somalia. "A black Muslim!" Even worse, Nana Gertrude is dispensed as a stock character of the worst "Pray-uz Jee-yuh-sus!" variety.
Ultimately, "The Twelfth Tribe" culminates in not much more than a missed opportunity, for what might have been a penetrating, psychological glimpse into the knotty mind of a social outsider has been distilled into a veritable pageant of social generalities.
Most disturbing of all, however, is the seeming lack of research that went into the production, a factor that marks a definite break from Rites & Reason's legacy of historical accuracy.
From the moment the rabbi chants his first prayer, mispronouncing several of the more elementary Hebrew expressions and thus inadvertently destroying his credibility as a learned religious leader, one wonders exactly how much preliminary investigation was conducted prior to the first performance.
It bears mentioning, however, that not all of these very correctable errors can be attributed to flaws in Pudlin's script - or, by that light, to weaknesses in directorial interpretation. If anything, the playwright should be congratulated for his bravery in unveiling such a show, and in his defense, his program notes even identify the "process" that has kept his script in a constant state of development.
Instead, perhaps the more pressing question might be directed at the producers of this theatrical mess. What would it take to endow this play, with its under-researched details and conspicuous inconsistencies, with a dramaturge? Because without someone to clean up the historical errors and misleading information, the spectator not only comes away with a deficient sense of the black Jewish condition, he begins to feel Gerald's pain. Cracking under the pathological weight of dueling minority legacies and a ramshackle production, the audience, too, can be driven to madness.
