After producing his beautifully tragic play
Sugar in Our Wounds two years ago, Penumbra Theatre commissioned playwright Donja R. Love for a different sort of play; a fable, a fantasy, "a meditation on enduring love through thee forced parting precipitated by the transatlantic slave trade" (Penumbra's President Sarah Bellamy in a note in the program).
Sugar in Our Wounds tells the doomed love story of two enslaved men in the South shortly before the Emancipation Proclamation, and
When We Are Found is almost like a prequel to the story, as well as a modern-day coda. Running just over an hour, it's a lyrical, fantastical, fluid celebration of unbreakable love.
See it at Penumbra in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood through May 18.
We begin in West Africa shortly before the transatlantic slave trade, with two men, two lovers, literally doing a happy dance, living their lives and enjoying being together. They have no idea that soon strangers will arrive in their village, kidnap them, transport them on ships to a faraway land, and enslave them and their descendants for centuries. Because how could anyone imagine such a thing? When one of the men is brutally ripped from the arms of the other, the latter builds a small rowboat and embarks on an adventure across the sea to find him. Along the way he meets creatures to help or advise him, including a talking fish, the moon, the sun, and the spirit of his lost lover. He never gives up, but the happy ending for these two may need to wait a few centuries. In my review of Sugar in Our Wounds, I wrote about "the hope that the Jameses and Henrys of today find their happy ending, that those of the past were denied," and it's a satisfying joy to see a glimpse of that here.
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| Halin Moss as The Seeker (photo by Caroline Yang) |
To bring this beautiful play to life, Penumbra has tapped director Lamar Perry, an Assistant Professor at UC San Diego. He's brought two recent graduates of UCSD to act in this two-hander, both of whom give lovely and heartfelt performances. Halin Moss is impassioned and unrelenting as "the seeker," while still expressing vulnerability when the search gets hard. Anthony Adu gets to have a little fun as the spirit-like visitors, imbuing the fish, the moon, and the sun with different personalities.
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| Anthony Adu as The Fish (photo by Caroline Yang) |
This is a play that's probably pretty sparse on the page; there are long sequences with no dialogue. But those silences speak volumes thanks to the direction, choreography (by Leslie Parker), and performances. Since it primarily takes place on a rowboat in the sea, the set (designed by Nicholas Ponting) is simple and elegant - a circular arch through which we see projections of waves (designed by Miko Simmons), and a rustic wooden rowboat that the actors Fred Flinstone around the stage, creating a fluid movement. Costumes (designed by Gregory Horton) are simple but effective - loose neutral-toned pants for the lovers, exchanged for more colorful pants for the fish, moon, and sun that hint at the characters rather than being too literal.
