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Culture Stage

Preview: The Shipment

THE SHIPMENT written and directed by Young Jean Lee, with Jordan Barbour, Mikeah Ernest Jennings, Prentice Onayemi, Douglas Scott Streater and Amelia Workman. Presented by Harbourfront World Stage at the Enwave (231 Queens Quay West). Opens Wednesday (May 9) and runs to May 12, Wednesday-Saturday 8 pm. $15-$45. 416-973-4000. See Listing.


When I ordered my copy of Young Jean Lee’s script The Shipment from Amazon, it arrived a few days later, the black cover as smooth and shiny as patent leather.

With a bit more fanfare, Lee’s cutting and stylish study of African-American identity will be delivered at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre as part of World Stage, a theatrical parcel bound in a web of political and historical strings.

“It refers to the way black people were shipped to the United States as chattel,” says performer Amelia Workman, explaining the title’s allusion to Middle Passage, which saw the enslavement and export of millions of Africans to Europe and the U.S.

The title is also a cheeky nod to the way portrayals of black culture are so easily added-to-cart and shipped around the world via Amazon.

“Everyone watches American movies or The Wire,” says Workman. “Those are the black people they meet and identify with.” She laughs. “I’m not knocking that stuff, but I do think that there are other stories out there for black people to tell.”

The D.C.-raised, NYC-based Workman is one of five performers (and the sole female) to have appeared in the much-lauded original 2009 production at The Kitchen in Manhattan. Workman has gone on to play shunned daughter Cordelia in Lee’s uncanny version of Lear in 2010, and has toured internationally with The Shipment, a show that continues to hold a lot of professional and personal import for her.

“[At acting calls] people assume, naturally, that I know more about crack pipes than about, say, Europe,” she says playfully. “Another actor in the show, he keeps being asked to rap at auditions. He’s like, ‘I can’t rap, but I went to Juilliard. Can I sing you an aria?'”

Shrewdly confronting assumptions is no small part of The Shipment. The play’s first half takes the form of a minstrel show, ticking off scene by scene a variety of African-American narratives. The multitalented cast dance, sing and perform a kind of stereotype panto while outfitted in crisp evening wear – as if they’ve ambled off the set of a Noël Coward play.

If the first act reiterates stereotypes, the second unflinchingly inverts them. Lee asked Workman and her cast mates about the parts they’d never had the opportunity to play and then tailored the roles and plot based on their answers.

But there were a few ground rules, says Workman.

“We can’t be family. We’re not a travelling basketball team. This is not Soul Food 3,” she laughs. “We don’t need to justify why everybody is the colour that they are,” she adds, all mirth gone from her voice.

Workman looks to new writing for roles that will challenge and satisfy her. “A lot of older work might feature people of colour, but those parts don’t make us feel good to play,” she says, citing as example scripts in which black actors are cast as maids, savages or slaves.

That sense of justice has been deeply influenced by Workman’s own biracial family. Her mother, a recently retired civil rights attorney (who’s Caucasian), was disowned by her parents for building a family with Workman’s father, an African-American griot.

“It was pretty hard for my mom the first time she watched The Shipment. She told me, ‘Everyone sees us as different. People will always think you’re black.’ And I was like, ‘Well, Mom, I am black!’ It was as if she finally realized it, in a different way than she had before.”

stage@nowtoronto.com

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