I’m concerned.  I tend to be concerned about many things in the world, but this one is troubling.  Tyler Perry’s new movie Temptation appears to have finally beaten into African American culture that there is some type of monomyth surrounding Black life.  Somehow Black life has yet again been equated with a sense of morality that simplifies Blackness.   There seems to be a continuous story in Tyler Perry’s films that seek to define Black life into a singular story arc that is inescapable in Perry’s world, which supposedly reflects certain circumstances for Black people.  I certainly don’t mean to say that what Perry presents is not some facet of Black life.  That would be as elementary as the idea of Perry’s monomyth.  After nearly 8 years of movies, I believe that it is very clear that there are repetitious rules in Perry’s films that make Black life conflated to one particular plane.  In a few points I will quickly explain using Temptation as a source as to how the monomyth of Black life operates in the world of Perry’s films and plays. 

The stasis:  Mediocrity Saves The World.  Ambition Shakes The World

            Temptation starts off with a story of ambition gone too far.  Judith starts in a position of telling a story of her “sister” who falls from grace.  Of course, Judith is speaking of herself as she starts at a matchmaking service where she is clearly unhappy.  She has her long time friend and husband, Brice, who works at a pharmacy.  However, Brice is a “good negro” figure who is cautious, contained, and patient while Judith is frustrated with her position at the firm.  Judith desires to open her own office and since obtaining a master degree she wants to do this fast.  However, Brice constantly starves her ambitions by saying that she can open her own practice in about 15 years.  Brice insists that Judith be patient and simply cook, clean, and sleep with him at least 3 times a week. 

            The simple idea is this: if a Black man or woman (usually woman) wants anything else other than a marriage and a less than fulfilling job, the world must be disrupted.  This has been done before in Perry’s movies.  Take The Family that Preys as an example.  Sanaa Lathan’s character is positioned as a woman who disrupts the stasis of the world by having an affair with her high-powered boss.  I am certainly not endorsing her affair or for Black women to have affairs but is it so terrible that she wants a person who is highly successful?  While her husband wants to be successful too, he is again cautious about how successful his wife is.  Ambition becomes equated with sin and lust.  Somehow wanting more means wanting to have an extramarital affair.  Or in the case of Madea’s Family Reunion wanting a husband who does not abuse you, which in this movie means having to leave her husband (which is again sinful and immoral).  Something similar happens in Diary of a Mad Black Woman where the woman must leave her husband in order to be happy. 

            What message is being sent when in numerous films ambition must shake the world we are in?  It happens more often that Black women should fear being ambitious and somehow settle for a marriage with far less ambition or far more abuse (which of course should be taken according to the mother in Madea’s Family Reunion). 

The Rising Action: The perfect Black Man/Woman

            So now that we have entered a world where ambition shakes the world, there must be a cause for this ambition, a physical manifestation.  In Temptation, this comes in the form of Harley: a rich, successful Black man who comes to Judith’s matchmaking firm looking for a match of course.  There his sinful eyes lie on Judith.  Although Judith is clothed conservatively, Harley looks at her in a lustful way, but also admires her intellectual.  Harley has everything in the world it seems: a plane, a great intellect, a built body, a fast car, and a desire that cannot be quenched.  He begins to play mind games with Judith making her question her marriage and status in the world while also working with her professionally.  Harley encourages Judith to open her own practice as a marriage counselor.  He thinks that she is beautiful and intellectually stimulating.  And of all things, he remembers her birthday.  All these things make Harley a charming, handsome, successful man.  He may be sinful in wanting a married woman, but they seem much more compatible than Brice and Judith.   This man appears perfect, something that at least most Black men should look up to. 

The Climax: The Broken Illusion

            The next monomyth of Black life is that the illusion is broken.   The climax of the film comes when we discover the Harley is nothing as what he appears to be.  He ends up raping Judith in order to fulfill his sexual desires with her (and projects those desires onto Judith afterwards).  Harley is also abusive, a drug user (cocaine?), and narcissistic.  He goes from being the model looking Black man (model is a stretch but for the sake of argument) to being the worst Black man on earth.  This makes the “good negro” Brice look like a patron saint.  Not only does Harley have all of this, but also at the end the audience discovers that Harley has HIV and has spread the disease to several women.  I believe the climax of the movie is when we see that Judith is completely broken.  There is nothing that can be done to mend her ways or return to any resemblance of the old stasis at the beginning of the movie.   

            The monomyth in Perry’s world seems to suggest that the world of Black life is constantly shaken when an illusion is broken. 

The Falling Action: The Savior Comes To The Rescue

            This monomyth is pretty simple.  The “good negro” comes to the rescue in one final hoorah.  See: Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea’s Family Reunion, Madea Goes To Jail. 

The Resolution: The Marriage/Divorce

            There is a rule of thumb in comedy: Almost all comedies end in marriage.  Why?  Because balance must be restored to the world.  Most if not all of Perry’s films end in either a marriage or divorce which gives the idea that someone is either being rewarded or punished for their actions.  In this case the monomyth places a value on the characters that inhabit this world.  In Temptation, getting a divorce and Brice choses to marry another woman and have a child punishes Judith.  In addition to this punishment, Judith contracts HIV (the same happens in For Colored Girls with The Lady in Red).  Someone in every Perry movie is rewarded or punished through love/marriage.  This places a value on someone in the world.  Literally.  The clear lesson is that those who are rewarded are those who have been patient, who want a nuclear family of some kind, and those who are humble aka Brice.  Those who are punished have pursued dangerous activities, broken the law, too ambitious, and impatient aka Judith. 

The Conclusion: The Monomyth Lives On

            The truth of the matter is that money is speech.  Where we choose to put our dollars says volumes about what we value.  We have come to accept Perry’s films as a kind of truth about Black life.  The same moments appear in every movie, giving the impression that these moments represent the whole of Black life.  This gives a simplest portrayal of Black stories that should be complex and multi layered.  As long as this monomyth continues such as Temptation continues it, we will see more of this one myth of Black life.        

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

            I pause today and this entire weekend to reflect.  To repeat and revise my annual tradition of listening to MLK’s I Have A Dream Speech.  It’s a moment that I pause every year to listen.  To think.  And to continue to look at my own style of leadership and vision for the future.  Despite my early career in theater, I have come to develop my own sense of a theory that I have about leadership that is a combination of theory, experience, pain, and challenge. 

            This year I pulled out the above quote because I thought about the idea of suffering and the mindfulness that comes with suffering.  Although King calls for his own vision of the future he is cautious of those, such as himself, who have suffered the brutality of the civil rights movement.  We often don’t remember this and we often haven’t depicted this, but it is an important acknowledgement in King’s speech.  And the past year and most recently this weekend I have looked at my own leadership and the growth that I have achieved as well as the growing that I still need to do.  These words stuck out to me because I think back to the origins of my fight for diversity starting in college when I was concerned about the use of people of color in shows.  The fight continues today and to some extent I have seen how the leadership I have practiced has made me realize that sacrifice and suffering all lend to service.  I am certainly not comparing the suffering of those on the civil rights movement.  But I see that what they were willing to go through-jail, dogs, fire hoses, ropes, fires, and death- are nothing in comparison to the sacrifice I have experienced of finding my own voice in leadership and facing the constant battle of justification for diversity or for attention to be paid. 

            The leadership theory I would like to propose is the idea of the “Promise Land of Change.”  The idea stems from a saying that I received from my mentor in college who said, “change is not meant for you. It is meant for those who come after you.”  These words still ring in my bones and in blood as I have worked in professional theater for the past 2 years.  It’s a phrase that I look back to when I am puzzled, confused, baffled, frustrated, or angry.  I have heard a variety of reasons and backlash as to why diversity is hard to achieve.  The traditional that diverse shows don’t “sell” and the February slot conversations.  To being told simply that dryness of a tired mouth and tongue.  The constant meetings about why.  It’s a suffering that at my young age is tiring.

            But what is so fascinating about King’s speech and King himself, is the realization of the need to return.  He follows sacrifice and suffering with a return to service:

 “Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.  I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”

            What keeps me going is the idea of the promise land.  The promise land is a vision, but not a destination.  It’s looking at the stream as well as the pebble.  Despite the trials and suffering, King tells people to continue to go back.  Go back to the fire and the fight.  Even go back to die.  But what is there is the promise land.  It is the dream.  However, of course, King never sees the promise land despite his dream.  He doesn’t experience it, he doesn’t live it, he doesn’t feel it, and he doesn’t see hardly anything at all.

            I relate this back to the theory of the promise land of change.  The idea that you don’t work in leadership necessarily to fulfill the vision all the time and that you are personally a beneficiary.  But the pursuit of that vision is where leadership is truly tested.  It is where I think about my own leadership experience of pursuing diversity in theater.  It is forward looking while present acting.  That incremental change and grand change can happen simultaneously.  But the work that I do has to be continued despite the suffering.  Through the suffering the healing must come in the goal and the dream, not in the wallowing and venting to others. 

            The healing aspect of this philosophy is important because in the healing is the continuation of purpose.  It is important to take steps to heal when attacking social change and leadership, especially when we are talking about the idea of the promise land.  The journey there seems so endless.  It seems that you wonder where the bleeding stops.  The bleeding stops when you stop to heal and speak.  You must speak with others who are like-minded like you in the cause.  You must find a support system that sees your vision.  You must continue to heal or else you can’t continue.  The healing also must happen in mentoring others.  There is a particular satisfaction in allowing others to reach the promise land when you can’t.  The return is important in the healing.  As much as you may not want to, you have to return and continue to return. 

            The healing also involves balance.  Do you overwork yourself reaching for the promise land?  What do you do for yourself in order to heal?  Do you cook?  Do you workout?  What do you do to heal yourself through social change?  I believe for King, he had to give the speech to help heal his fighters.  In leadership, we must realize that the journey to the promise land can have a lot of people joining you (I mean Moses started with 40,000).  In that process you have to heal others, which in the process you can heal yourself. 

            King’s speech and holiday realizes that his life was so much about service not to his vision, but to the people.  His vision for others and help for other people were only preceded by other leaders who I believe espouse the promise land leadership theory (Lincoln, Ghandi, FDR, Reagan).  The promise land theory is how I have operated in recent years: it’s not about your vision; it’s about the vision you inspire in others to see their own promise land.  It’s an act of selflessness that is so sacrificial that it hurts the spirit, which inspires me to heal.  In order to fight, you must heal from your scars.  It’s the only way to keep going.

King Hedley II        

          There was a moment in time when I read a book back at Florida State called, “This I Believe.”  The book was based on an NPR series where NPR would ask people to write in 500 words what they believed.  These opinions ranged from a social worker all the way to Colin Powell.  This was a book that had a certain impact on me because I read all these small excerpts about what people believed in.  It started to make me question, what do I believe?  Why do I believe it?  Do I share this belief vocally?  I couldn’t figure it out at the moment.  I was still in college and completely confused about life as well as having a “mid-Black crisis” of discovering my own identity.  Sometimes I go back to this book to seek some life advice, especially in a new job and new position.  But as the year 2012 comes to a close, I think I have figured out at least something that I believe in.

            As with anything in life, coming to what you believe is a process.  Sometimes quick and painless.  Sometimes ruff and tumbling.  But one of the things that has stuck with me the most in my early life and career came yet again, from my dear mentor, Irma Mayorga. 

            As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I will always be in debt to Irma for everything she did for me.  But one of the dearest things she gave me was a principle that her mentor taught her that she would pass on to me-rising and lifting. 

            Irma’s mentor, Cherrie Moraga, is someone I had the pleasure to meet when I went to see a play by her while I was in Los Angeles.  I could see how Irma would take after Cherrie.  She was very warm, open, and deeply grounded.  When I talked to Irma about meeting her, she mentioned a valuable saying that she learned from Cherrie-“Rise and Lift.  When you rise in your own successes, you must lift others with you.”  Irma reflected with me how Cherrie afforded her opportunities while her career was rising as a playwright.  Irma was able to direct and have in Cherrie a playwriting mentor.  While Cherrie rose, she lifted Irma as well as others up. 

            As with most things in life, moments and small stories such as that do not hit you until later in life.  This came to me while in the midst of the apprenticeship program where I work.  The reason I was so excited about starting the apprenticeship program was to mentor and help young professionals and colleagues to obtain skills that will help the succeed in the field.  My hope is that the apprentices will get everything they need to conquer and change this field.  I became excited about this prospect, because I found the value that my apprenticeship and the mentorship that I received and how powerful it could be.  I hoped to impart the same unto them. 

            At a point in the program, one of the apprentices that I began to become close with and provide advice in some way pulled me into a private conversation.  He announced to me that he had chosen to leave the program.  This had almost heartbroken me because I saw so much that we could accomplish together.  However, he mentioned something to me that truly moved me.  That encapsulated what I believe in and what I strive for.  He looked me dead in my eyes with a lump in his throat and said, “If I have gained anything out of all of this, it was looking up to you as a mentor.” 

            That moment shifted my entire world.  That one sentence.  That somehow I had impacted this person in a matter of months and that they could walk away with someone by their side.  He may not have gotten everything he wanted, but he got something he felt that he needed: someone to guide and help lift him.  As I reflected on this loss, I discovered that what I believe in is rising and lifting.  That ultimately my goal in life is to allow others to go farther than me. 

            But one important thing that I have learned about my This I Believe principle is that I do not rise and lift from the heavens.  I have never liked the idea of lifting from on high.  I think that doesn’t allow anyone that you mentor to go anywhere.  They end up in the cloud and in this place of privilege that doesn’t reach back to the people in the valley.  Rising and lifting from the clouds, from the Gods, from Mt. Olympus, does not help others.  It doesn’t allow anyone to go anywhere.  They stay in the clouds.  Instead I rise and lift from the valley.  The valley is usually a deep, deep place.  As we often here from people, “I shall rise from the valley and shadow of death.”  This is where I choose to lift from: the valley.  The valley is where you can lift people who have lost all faith in themselves and need to reach for the clouds.  The valley is where the meekest among us can rise to be a champion and lift others with them.  The valley is where I have been.  I have seen my faults.  I have seen my failures.  I have seen my qualms and I have seen my woes. 

            But the valley is also where I have seen the star of success.  The valley is where I look out and see the angles preparing for my arrival.   Looking from the valley does not push me down, but gives me strength.  Lifting from the valley has made me see the good that people can do.  The valley is a dreadful place, but such a powerful one.  The valley has all of our fears; the things that hold us back.  But this is from what I rise and lift from.  The valley. 

            So I believe in not just rising and lifting, but rising and lifting from the valley.  Rising and lifting from a place where it seems there is no hope.  Rising and lifting from a place that many people look at and figure you cannot get out of.  Rising and lifting from the valley gives you the knowledge to know where others are coming from. 

This I Believe-To Rise and lift from the valley 

King Headley II  

     Life has a strange and powerful way of uniting people in an effort.  You don’t know where the path in life will take you and how you will come to find your passion.  If you asked me today if I was the same person I was 5 years ago, I would say for the most part yes.  But I’ve had an important revelation since I was just graduating high school-that I’m an African American male working in theater.  This may seem obvious, but the moment that I recognized this was an important turning point in my life.  It hit me again this past weekend when I attended TCG’s Fall Forum on Governance entitled-Leading The Charge.  The focus of this forum was exciting, yet frightening: Diversity and Inclusion.  

    I was excited about exploring the subject of Diversity and Inclusion with TCG.  In fact, it all really started when I was accepted into the Young Leaders of Color Program as a part of the TCG conference in Boston.  It was such an honor and a wonderful experience.  But more importantly it connected me with more people of color who were committed to leadership in the field of theater.  It started a journey that was expected, but in many ways completely unexpected.  It was another stone that created a ripple effect in the pool of diversity that everyone was wading through.  

     One problem that we did face at the TCG conference was that although there was a strong emphasis on diversity, it seemed that at times all the people of color would only talk to each other about diversity.  There seemed to be a disconnect between the conversation that people of color were having where we were going in circles around the topic.  Meanwhile, white people were either uninterested in the conversation or they felt they did not have the vocabulary or expertise to talk about diversity and inclusion.  This lead to an urging from one of my colleagues, Malcolm Darrell, to call for a session on diversity and inclusion at the Fall Forum on Governance.  

     Well the call was heard.  TCG put not only a session together around diversity and inclusion, but made the entire Fall Forum about diversity and inclusion.  This sounded almost unprecedented to me.  The quick turnaround in response from TCG was astounding.  I knew that I had to participate and I decided I would go.  I then got asked to be a small group facilitator to help lead the conversation about diversity with a smaller group.  After attending the fall forum and participating, I’ve had a chance to reflect about all the conversations that occurred.  

1.   The ties that bind are important. 

     A theater professor of mine one said something that has stayed with me for a long time: “There are 10 people that work in American theater.  And they all know each other.”  There was something unequivocally moving about being in a room with fellow Young Leaders of Color, New Generations Grantees, and others in the field.  Even senior staff members who were of color would approach me and were excited that I was there with my fellow Young Leaders of Color.  I don’t think this experience would be the same without my fellow Young Leaders of Color there.  I needed people at times who were my age and could just understand me.  I think if the YLC weren’t there, I would’ve been in trouble.  There was something so comforting about all of us acting as if we never left each other.  When fighting for diversity and inclusion you need people who will have your back.  And this cohort most certainly did.  

2.     When The Elephant Steps On People 

     There was a particular mix of excitement about the forum.  Everyone seemed overall pumped for the conversation or at least that I was the feeling I had.  However, with any conversation that involves an elephant in the room people tend to get nervous.  And who can blame them?  They may get stepped on by the elephant in the room.  All weekend the biggest thing that we all braced for was the large group conversation.  It seemed like everyone was gearing up for the Christmas present they didn’t want to open from that strange cousin.  Some people were just outright afraid of having their opinions stepped on by someone who disagreed with them.  

3.     Trust Your Expertise 

     A great mentor figure to me, Rebecca Rugg, pointed out something that had also been on my mind during this Fall Forum.  That everyone has expertise on something, even diversity and inclusion.  It’s a matter of getting them to have comfort and confidence in their expertise that is important.  There were moments in fall forum where yes, people were nervous to talk about diversity and inclusion around other people of color.  However, my job as a small group facilitator was not to take power from other non-people of color regarding diversity.  But instead I had to pull people’s expertise out of them specifically about diversity and inclusion.  When this happened there were some fantastic ideas that flowed out from people that I did not expect to see.  I had to check my own assumptions at the door.  I thought that I would be one of the only experts because this was my area of speciality.  However, although I trusted my own expertise, I also learned from others expertise on the subject as well.  Some very unexpectedly.  

4.     The “We Need To Talk” Is Still Hard 

      This is a pretty simple one, but important.  We all know that whenever we hear “we need to talk” there’s always something on the horizon.  But the fact remains that while many were ready for the conversation, there were still some that just weren’t.  There were some people who came the first day and left by Sunday (possibly not by a product of disliking the conversation, but other reasons).  There were some, though few, who chose not to say anything.  There were some people who needed a basic definitions around diversity and inclusion (what is institutional racism?).  There are some (like me) who are still trying to get people to “get it” about diversity.  

5.     The Conversation About You vs. With You 

     However, despite all of that this leads me to my final point of hope that I took away from TCG.  Before I went to NY I saw an interview with Senator-Elect Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin.  They asked her about advocating for gay rights and issues while being in the senate.  She said something that I thought solidified some things for me: “When you’re not involved in the conversation, the conversation is about you.  When you’re involved and included, the conversation is with you.”  I think this sets up perfectly what kind of outcome this weekend had.  Although the conversations were not always easy, it certainly was better to have all of us in one to talk about these problems than to continue to exclude the conversation from ourselves.  That is what left me rejoicing at Fall Forum.  The fact that we could all come together as a field and talk about diversity and inclusion in meaningful and engaging ways that left us with action steps and a charge to continue not just the conversation but with moving forward to change the field.  There were so many people who were champions of the idea of diversity.  Who left empowered as leaders in the field to go and do something about this topic.  I believe a lot of people left with pause to self-reflect as a field about what we need to do to go forward.  Below are a few action items that I would like to point out: 

     -Involving the Young Leaders of Color through TCG for it’s diversity programming

     -Adopting a Rooney Rule in theater in which at least one person of color must be in the final applicant pool in a hire.  

     -Engaging as a theater community to talk about problems and issues with diversity in the field.  

     -Creating a listserve or database of people of color who want to work in theater or are looking for careers in theater

     -Creating diversity statements and initatives at their own theaters. 

     -Having TCG create a funding source that can support people of color/diversity initiatives in the field.  

Overall, I can say that the Fall Forum was a truly transformative experience for me.  It engaged me in a powerful conversation around diversity and inclusion within the field and helped me to realize how I can contribute to that conversation.  The next task however, is to turn evidence and conversation into action.  We must continue to push the leadership of our theaters to act on diversity and not just say they are all for it.  My goal is to help create diversity and inclusion initiatives at my theater.  I hope that you will take something from this post and use it to move forward.  

The conversation cannot just sit.  It has to live in the spirit of action amongst everyone.  

King Hedley II 

            Exactly a week prior to President Barack Obama accepting the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, Mitt Romney had done the same for the Republican Party.  I watched both the Democratic and Republican conventions.  But something that I saw at the Republican convention was quite disturbing and haunting; something that has become the perfect metaphor for the racial dynamic in America today.  What was intriguing was that this is something that we see almost everyday of our lives, but do not recognize it’s political meaning: an empty chair. 

            Last week, the Republicans gathered in Tampa to present their case to America.  While I have qualms with their vision of America, this is not meant to be a political blog post.  Instead, I would like to focus on the performance of Oscar-winning director and actor Clint Eastwood who ended up being the mystery guest at the Republican convention.  Eastwood is someone that I admire as a director.  He has made beautiful movies and he has also presented a body of work that questions the idea of traditional Americana and American figures. He has accomplished so much in American cinema and has a definitive directing style. 

            And then he appeared in Tampa.  I was not like so many surprised at Eastwood’s political leanings, although they have been traditionally hard to pin down.  I could see where Eastwood would be a break and wonderful warm up act for Mitt Romney’s speech.  Suddenly all those who had no interest in watching the convention would flock to watch what the Hollywood icon would say.  However, this suddenly took a turn for the worse.  Mr. Eastwood announced that he was going to interview our President and ask the President why he had broken all of the glorious promises that he made four years ago.  The President, our first Black President, was not there to answer any of the said questions that Mr. Eastwood would ask or any of the hilarious accusations that Mr. Eastwood wielded toward the President (Mr. Eastwood commented that he didn’t think that attorneys should be President, not knowing that Romney has a law degree from Harvard).  The President was simply represented by an empty chair. 

            Eastwood continued to ramble and badly improvise a conversation with the President.  He was the delightful entertainment of the Republican Convention which political commentator Alex Castellanos of CNN stated, “He (Eastwood) did something that had never been done.  He got people to laugh at Barack Obama.”  This is mostly true in the eyes of Republicans.  Eastwood had some interesting one-liners.  However, people could not laugh at Barack Obama because President Obama was not there.  He was not there to lend his voice or even his body.  Our first Black President was in that moment rendered completely invisible. 

            This is problematic on a variety of levels.  There are many ways in which the office of the President was disrespected.  But allow me to turn away from politics and use this in a much larger context and apply this to American theater, which also has an empty chair of its own. 

            American theater has come to face a slow and growing reality: that diversity is the only way that our field can survive.  There are two demographics that American theaters have had problems attracting: a younger crowd and a diverse, multicultural crowd.  The problem of diversity has plagued theaters big and small.  There are many in the field that are willing to have the conversation around diversifying theaters with both their staffs and their audiences.   However, there is a bleak picture of diversity in theaters.  Currently in the field, there is not a person of color who serves as a Managing or Executive Director of a major regional or LORT theater and there are very few who are Artistic Directors.  There are few theaters that have persons of color in senior staff positions.   Theaters as a whole hardly have people of color who hold full-time positions.  Where I currently work, I am one of 5 people of color on the administrative staff.  Production staffs have an even larger problem with diversity as theaters come up short with the number of people of color who work as full-time or full-time seasonal staff.  This is not to say that progress has not been made.  Clearly many of my colleagues who work in theaters across the country are where they are for a reason. 

            But the above description of the lack of people of color in leadership and overall staff positions shows the danger of the empty chair.  In many theaters there are empty chairs that are lacking people of color and younger people that theaters so desperately want to reach out to.  As conversations around events that surround the theater or shows that will be produced in the season, the chairs that could occupy people of color remain empty.  Despite the efforts to reach this demographic and while theaters consider diverse work in their season, there are many questions that artistic staffs discuss about plays by people of color who are not given the space or the chair to answer.  I am sure that we are all familiar with these questions:

1.     Who is going to come see that?

2.     Is that going to sell?

3.     Aren’t we excluding people by doing a show about a specific culture?

4.     Why does everything have to be about race?

5.     Will they come to theater? 

The danger of these questions is that in an administrative sphere where there are hardly people of color to participate in the question asking, the questions also are not answered or confronted to people of color.  Instead, the questions about minority plays fall on deaf ears.  The person of color who could respond to the question is not able to because the chair is empty.  What Eastwood demonstrated in his tirade about the President becomes a perfect metaphor about the problem that American theater faces: the chairs are not being filled.  Instead, artistic leaders ask questions to invisible people of color about plays simply because they are not there.  Unless that staff member is an ally of color, the chair remains empty.  The larger problem is that in this country race is treated as something that no one should talk about, acknowledge, or address and when it does people of color are not there to speak or answer questions.  The converse can also happen when people of color want to talk about race in theater; there are hardly any white people to fill the seats to talk with other people of color about race.  But the danger of the invisibility of people of color is the silence that increasingly fills a room that wants answers.  

            So what is the answer to the empty chair?  How do we fill the empty chair?  How do we make the invisible become visible? Here are a few ways that I have observed or heard of: 

            1.  When hiring a position, do not end the search until a person who identifies as a person of color applies.

                        It can be easy when you are looking for a position to overlook this simple gesture.  But it is important.   I have heard of this from Oregon Shakespeare and have heard it works wonders.  Don’t end the search until a person of color applies that has clear qualifications for the position. 

            2.  Collaboration

                        This might sound simple, but if there are questions about plays that involve race it is ok to ask a person of color who works in the theater or somewhere else.  Ask them to read the play you are considering.  Even if they are not an “artistic” person this does not stop them from having an opinion.  Ask them if that would speak to their community or another community.  Ask them if it is good.    

            3.  Go to the community

                        Find a way to reach out to the communities about plays or issues that are facing people of color.  These can be communal forums that are held by the theater.  Invite people from everywhere to come and listen to the stories that they are interested in.  Invite them into the theater for a conversation that happens before seeing the play and not just when the season is announced and you have to put it in front of their faces.  Involve them in the process and allow them to understand what it takes to make a good and marketable season. 

            4.  Have the hard conversation

                        I have hardly seen a theater that will publicly admit their faults.  Sometimes, simply admitting and acknowledging the institutional racism that exists is what starts the breakdown of barriers.  The first step to solving a problem is admitting there is one.  Once you do, you can take the steps to work with people to help solve that problem. 

            There are many other solutions that can be discussed, but these are a few that I would offer that I have heard and/or seen work.  The empty chair in American theater is in almost every American theater.  We see it ourselves and wonder, “Why is no one sitting in that chair”?  The challenge now is to fill those empty chairs with bodies that will use their voice and expertise to help.  If theaters don’t realize this, they could end up looking like Clint Eastwood.  Any theater that is willing to challenge the notion of the empty chair I say this to: Go ahead.  Make my day.

Solly Two Kings 

    I have always been intrigued in my study and working in theater by solo performances and shows.  Solo performances continue to show me what Peter Brooks meant about theater in his famous book, The Empty Space.  An empty space is about all you need in order to make theater.  

     What I have particularly been interested in, is the use of solo performance by minority artists as a powerful storytelling tool as well as a tool for social change.  One of the first examples that I saw of this was the work of my mentor, Irma Mayorga, in her work about the panza called The Panza Monologues performed by acclaimed playwright and performer Virginia Grise.  The tools that Mayorga employs in her work embody an exploration of Chicana experiences through the vessel and platform of one person/body.  The idea that multiple marginalized bodies and voices are being represented by Grise gives the audience a medium to identify with the multiple representations.  Mayorga also employs theatricality and much of what I call “using the theater to it’s advantage” methodologies by having a band accompany the performer on stage that plays Latino/a music and rhythms throughout the piece.  This use of the band provides the solo performer and the audience to engage with the content of the play in unique ways.  The Panza Monogoues ultimately tells the underlying stories and experiences of Chicana women through individualization that is also collaborative and collective.  It appears that minority theater not only wants to tell stories, but engage their community in a storytelling methodology that is unique to their experience.  

     Before leaving Chicago, I had the absolute pleasure to receive a complimentary ticket from an artist I met at TCG, KJ Sanchez, for a solo performance that she was doing at a Latina/o solo performance festival called Yo Solo (which means I am in Spanish).  It was the first that I had heard of the festival and it was the first of it’s kind that I knew of.  There were 6 different solo pieces being presented that told various facets of the Latina/o experience and expressive culture.  Although I primarily knew KJ, I was very impressed with Collaboraction’s willingness to help produce the festival.

     The title of KJ’s piece is, Highway 47.  In the piece KJ recounts and tells the story of her ancestry through a large piece of land and communal space known as Tomé, which dates back to when Spain owned a large majority of North America.  As the piece evolves, we lean more about KJ’s ancestral origins as well as a piece of Tomé’s past that her family has refused to talk about until her father and mother were both passed on.  We come to learn, as she learns herself, that what we thought was the truth was not all that it appeared to be.  Through a series of devices including a flowing white dress that had projected upon it letters and legal documents regarding the communal land we see the history and true story of Tomé.  The letters and legal documents accent the troubling story of the many lawsuits and bureaucratic proceedings that her family and the members of Tomé faced regarding the ownership of the land.  But there is also a more important meaning to this.  One of the most powerful moments in the piece, KJ mentions that because a lot of the legal battle over the land happened when she was young, she inherited much of this history.  She did not create it, she did not actively participate in it.  Instead she inherited and encountered the ire and pain of her family’s history with the land and the story that she must tell.  What we see in the audience is the not only her telling us about the history and her inheritance of the history, but we see the ancestry and the history projected upon the body just as they were projected upon her.  This is also juxtaposed after KJ performed to Mariachi music, a classic and signified dance in Latina/o culture.  

     Another device and concept seen in KJ’s solo performance is a combination of traditional performance of the “me, not me, and not not me.”  In many solo performances if there are other characters that appear in the play, they typically appear through the apparatus of the performer’s body.  The performer must embody not only themselves, but others that are not there.  What is simply stunning and I think smartly done in KJ’s performance is that she does not have a large physical transformation between herself and other people such as her mother and her father.  KJ has only subtle transformations between the characters that are gestured to us such as a placement of her hands and a slightly older voice to conjure her mother or a slight hunch in her back to ressurect her father.  What is ingenious about this, is that as an actor KJ cannot escape herself into the full embodiment of those characters because those characters are a part of her.   The small alterations between KJ and her father are an example of the not not me.  KJ acknowledges that part of her is her father even though she is not her father.  That is not something that she can run from as many of us cannot run from our past or our families which I believe she espouses to the audience.  The slight variation of character gives the audience enough indication that there are different characters in the play, but because of the little physical changes there is an acknowledgment by the actor and author that these characters still live and breathe inside her.  This allows the audience to thus not observe KJ and step away from herself, but also recognize that we also “not not” observe her because she is herself onstage.  

     Highway 47 is a beautiful piece about family, land, and in many ways a breakdown of the idea that heroic figures are not always so saintly as they appear.  What I see in this show is a very site specific theater, in the sense that the specificity of the site lies in the spirit of not only Latina/os but also all of us who have faced and confronted a truth about our past and our own personal history.  I encourage everyone to see this work that explores so much in an hour.  It will leave you with a plethora to consider and a history that is largely untold: about how, for Latina/os they did not cross the border.  Instead, the border crossed them.  

    If you are in Chicago next week, please go and see the Yo Solo Festival at Collaboraction!  

Solly Two Kings 

     You know those times when people will tell you something prophetic, something they have faith will happen but you don’t?  Something that keeps irking at you about what you will become and what you can be.  It’s frightening and you shy away from it.  You don’t believe it whatsoever.  However, something happens.  Someone identifies you as just that prophetic ideal.  

     This happened to me when I got a call from New York while I was working one day at Steppenwolf.  I had no idea who would be calling me from New York, but I stepped outside of the offices and took the call.  The call came from someone at the offices of the Theater Communications Group regarding my nomination as a Young Leader of Color.  To provide some perspective on this, I initially received an email saying that I was selected as an alternate for the program.  I didn’t have any inclination of someone dropping out of the program so I put that venture to the side and moved on about my life.  I was already in a program that involved leadership and diversity, so I was happy regardless.  

     And then this phone call came.  Identifying me.  Marking me as a Young Leader of Color.  That they wanted me to come to Boston to participate in the program and the TCG Conference as a whole.  I was ecstatic.  I was extremely excited.  But something came over me after the reality of the call set in.  Why am I a leader?  More to the point of the program, why am I a leader of color?  Why do I have the title and therefore the responsibility?  I’m a young, 23 year old theater practitioner who just got out of college.  These questions are not meant to be a false modesty or humbleness, but instead a serious inquiry: why am I a leader of color?  

     So now I had to pack my bags and fly to Boston (which I have never been to before, so that made me more excited).  This was my first time at TCG and I had done my research beforehand of who was going to be there and what kind of sessions and presentations were happening.  It was an exciting venture and it seemed as if all 5 of my days were going to be filled with activities with my Young Leaders of Color cohort.  I was excited to meet these other young leaders and pick their brains about the institutions that they were practicing in and how they viewed leadership.  On the first day I could tell that I was with a dynamic group of people.  I was among college professors, people who ran their own companies, directors, a playwright who writes specifically for geeks (and non-geeks), an actor who was hard of hearing, actors who were of hearing, a guy who had a PO BOX in NY, and a rather tall Black man from the Yale School of Drama.  All of these were people who seemed comfortable being people of color and recognized they were people of color in larger white institutions.  I felt at home.  I didn’t feel strange as in other cases and this was because I was around an intelligent group of people who spoke the same language.  Even though we were all vastly different in our experiences and backgrounds, we shared a common theme of being people of color in theater.  

     Throughout the week we were immersed in several sessions all that surrounded the conference theme Model The Movement.  What was amazing about these session was that most of them surrounded diversity and inclusion.  It was interesting to see so many people involved in conversations surrounding diversity and some of the problems that American theaters still face.  While this was encouraging, one problem that a colleague of mine mentioned was that in many of these conversations there were only people of color involved.  There were not white allies or white people who were involved in the conversation.  Although the conversation was healthy and many action steps were identified, there was a concern that in many ways we were simply talking to ourselves.  It is as if theaters talk about diversity but are not willing to have the conversation that we were having in many of these sessions.  Some of these conversations involved issues of tokenism, the need for more people of color in senior staff level positions, and the need for the continued inclusion of multiple voices of diversity.  It was quite beautiful.  It was wonderful.  They were conversations that made sense to me and confirmed that I was not crazy.  That there were other people like me who worked in American theater and faced some of the same issues and problems.  

     One of the biggest discoveries that I had at this conference was surprisingly simple and somewhat ironic to the cohort that I was a part of: that I am a leader. That not only am I a leader, but I am a Black leader.  I am a leader of color who has a duty and responsibility because I am identified as such to do something.  To speak out for diversity and to challenge people’s thinking.  I learned a lot about myself.  I learned that at my core are leadership and diversity.  And that means something.  Something that I am now just discovering and have years to develop.  I don’t say this to be arrogant or to brag about it.  But that the journey to discovering this was hard to believe and accept.  But seeing my fellow cohort and the amazing things that they had done and would soon be doing gave me unprecedented hope and reassurance that I have a net to catch me while I am out here roaming the waters of my career as a person of color in theater.  I view leadership somewhat how Mufasa viewed bravery in The Lion King.  I did not go into the world looking to be a leader.  I am a leader when I need to be.  I am a follower when I need to be too.  I can inhabit both at the same time.  

     So what happens now?  Well the fight is just beginning for me.  I have a long way to go, but the beginning of the journey has been nothing short of astronomical.  I met so many brave and wonderful people who came before me that inspired me to accept what I was declared to be and to remember my responsibility.  I heard a great quote tonight at a show that I think defines most of my thoughts about my life and leadership experience: “It doesn’t matter if you’re moving forward or backward.  As long as you’re moving” 

Solly Two Kings  

     Over the past two weeks I helped out a friend with a one man show that he had written about an open, yet vurnerable part of his life.  The author, Sam Roberson Jr., is a coworker of mine at Writer’s Theater where we both work in Audience Services.  We both bonded because we were the only Black people that worked at the theater and we both found similar interests in American theater and diversity.  We both talked about our own struggles working in majority white theaters in America and the politics and consequences of doing such especially as Black men.  

     I found out over the course of getting to know Sam that he was not only an actor with an interesting story, but also a writer.  He mentioned to me a non profit organization that he founded called the Make Me a Match Project.  The non profit seeks to add more donors to the Bone Marrow Registry which is low among the African American and minority community, to help patients such as Sam who had Leukemia find a match for a bone marrow transplant.  While there are many people who are on the Bone Marrow Donor Registry, because there are very few minorities who are on the registry they have a much harder time finding a match.  Sam started the project in order to get more people on the registry as well as use theater to tell the stories of other young minorities who have not found a match and promote not only awareness but action.  

    Sam’s play entitled, And They Said I Wouldn’t Make It: A Story of Hope, follows the journey of Sam’s battle with Leukemia at a very young age and his little chance of living.  The production I helped with was produced along with Congo Square Theater Company here in Chicago.  Sam enlisted my help in getting the word out about the show as well as coming up with a way to document audience response to the show.  I felt obligated to help a very little told story become something that the Chicago community needed to hear.  And Sam proved this in his execution and performance of this event.  

    The night that I attended there were two ways in which the audience could interact with his show as well as his non profit.  The first was a photo wall with the logo M3P.  The second was a donor registry table that was there, however this was saved for later in the show.  Sam also featured a performance by Chicago talent and Congo Square Ensemble Member, Alexis J. Rogers, who gave a beautiful and moving introduction to the piece through song.  Afterward, two poets also performed and told their struggles of illness and disease.  

    Then came the main event: Sam’s one man story.  Now with any one man show, especially in Black theater, there is a need to perform yourself as well as perform others that will inform the performance of yourself.  For instance, one of the slogans for the Make Me A Match Project is Conceive, Achieve, and Believe.  However, we come to find that this is not only a slogan but an embodiment of a saying that Sam’s father imparted on him when he was younger.  We see Sam use this slogan in the funniest of moments when he is at bat during a baseball game to when he is holding on for dear life and his father’s words must ring throughout his body in order for him to survive.  Throughout the play we see several other characters that are apart of Sam’s life appear: his classmates who tease him for having a bloody nose, the doctors who don’t know what to do about his constants nose bleeds, his sister who wonders why her brother gets all the attention, his mother who worries and nourishes, his father who fights, his first love who is also a cancer patient.  All of these people embodied and performed by Sam as a part of his story which is inherently a part of him.

    What Sam infuses into his show is something that is very important to African American theater: the act of repetition and revision.  However, this is not a simple repeating and revising, but also an act of call and response or more accurately, recall and response.  Not only are all these characters performed and characterized on stage, but Sam makes a point to recall everyone that is important to him in the world and those who are not a part of this world.  The idea of call and response is an important motif in the Black church where the preacher recites a piece of scripture to his audience and his audience must respond.  What I notice Sam doing in his show is not just calling to his audience for a response, but instead allowing the recalling of the people in his life to tell and illuminate his story to which the audience must consistently respond to through verbal acknowledgement and awe.  This is a very important ritual to storytelling and how the vocalization of memory is essential to Sam telling his warm and heartfelt story.  

    But what the recall and response results to is toward the end of the show when Sam pays homage to those who he tells his story for.  In a very moving moment at the end of the show where Sam is nearly in tears as he recalls and acknowledges the people for whom he has performed for.  He mentions his mother, his father, his sister, his wife, his first love interest, for those who can not speak.  This is not an act of mere repeating, but again recalling.  Recalling for the sake of remembering.  Recalling in order for people to emotionally respond to the people who have influenced his life and his battle.  At the end of the night, the recalling of people also invites a new kind of response: a response to act.  At the end of the show, Sam encourages people to act by registering to become a Bone Marrow Donor to help save the lives of the millions of people who are searching for a match.  Sam even brings up several children and their parents who are in need of a donor.  This infuses a mixture of recall and response for the audience themselves to remember the journey that they expereinced and respond by registering to be a donor.  I myself registered to be a donor because of the response I felt that night.  

     Recall and response is important in Black theater, but is also an essential dramaturgical element in this show as it is for most one man shows.  In Sam’s work we see a reflection and performance of himself and his life through this lens.  What we come out of it is a need to act, a need to remember why he made it; and how he almost didn’t make it.  

    If you would like more information about the Make Me A Match Project and more of Sam’s story and cause, please go to: http://www.makemeamatch.org/

Solly Two Kings 

“My enemies all around me picking the flesh from my bones. I’m choking on my own blood”
-Hearld Loomis, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

A large motif and theme in African American theater revolves around the title of this piece. Blood and bones are a pretty rampant subject in Black theater. I first stumbled on the idea in Wilson’s play Gem of the Ocean where a character must travel to the “City of the Bones” in order to become clean. At the City of the Bones he must take a tragic journey in order to reach peace. He must experience the pain of the Middle Passage, the sufferings of death. He must see the bones that inhabit the ocean that claimed his ancestors, the blood that was spilled that once was contained in a Black body. A similar moment happens in the play quoted above, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone where Hearld Loomis sees people who are only bones walking over a body of water before becoming flesh when reaching land. The blood and bones that inhabit the Black body were brutally taken from them through their deaths along the Middle Passage. The Atlantic Ocean becomes a literal graveyard that characters must return to and reconcile with in order to become whole again. The blood and bones are tied to the Black body, which in turn are tied to history. Thus in this light history is not only written on the body in Blackness but also written and revised within the body through the blood and bones that live in each ancestor of a slave. Sometimes blood is meant to cleanse, to heal. It is also meant to stain, to become permenant. Something that we cannot run away from.

Recently a tragedy struck the Black community and the nation as a whole. A young African American teen, Trayvon Martin, was walking home one night when he was being followed by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman. Zimmerman began to pursue Trayvon, who was wearing a hoodie. Trayvon began to run from the suspecious man who was following him for no apparent reason. Trayvon who held no gun or weapon, presented no signs of violence, and only carrying a bag of skiittles was shot and killed by Zimmerman even though a dispatcher told him not to pursue Trayvon. Zimmerman has not yet been arrested because he claims that he shot Trayvon in self defense. Blood was spilled, innocent Black blood. We lost a young Black man. We lost the blood and bones of someone who did not deserve to lose themt. He will join his ancestors in the endless amount of Blood and Bones that are gone because of racial stigma and crime.

But remember, blood and bones can heal and cleanse. Think of the play King Hedley II another great play by Wilson. In this play blood is spilt in a different way. Blood is spilt for the growth of something new, a new seed that is planted because of the sacrifice of another. In the play the title character dies at the hands of a gunshot. The character’s blood spills over on a plot of ground where he has planted seeds and has tried to grow something. Despite the loss of life, his death symbolizes a new blooming of something else. Something new that can grow and grow stronger.

The tragedy of Trayvon Martin reveals a lot of America’s racial character and the ideas of justice. People are angry. Justice has not been served and many still walk about in ignorance of what has happened to this young Black man. His blood and bones are gone from his body, from this earth. They cannot be recovered. He will not be brought back. However, his blood can inspire a movement toward justice and acknowledgement to grow. His blood and bones can go to help uncover the overtly racist actions that occured and the inaction that has been allowed. The blood and bones of Trayvon Martin should not be laid to the ground to sit, but instead to foster and grow a rallying cry and passion within people who do not want to see this unjustice go unnoticed.

Blood and bones need to bring justice through passion and actions. Fight for the blood and bones of so many of our ancestors who have died and gone unaccounted for because of the racist infrastructure of justice in America. Do not lie in ignorance, do not stand idle. Blood and bones are essential to the body. They are not unimportant. Do not allow the blood and bones of Trayvon Martin to be buried in the ground. Allow them to live, to cleanse, to grow and give bloom to a new spring filled with justice.

Solly Two Kings

I’ve been pretty expressive and vocal about my thoughts on diversity and inclusion particularly in American theater which is where I’ve gotten most of my training in critical race theory. I’m grateful, as always, for my education and experiences at Florida State and forging my thoughts about diversity and the ongoing fight for greater diversity in theater and in the world.
One of the words I’ve consistently heard in recently has been the world “ecology” in American theater. From my perspective it appears to be an examination of the creatures and living organisms that inhabit a particular place. Of course the ecology of an area or in this case a field has a variety of species to observe, to study, and to investigate. It seems like you must look at everything and also something very specific at the same time.
Diversity is something that I talk about pretty consistently at work since it is a part of my charge of the Multicultural Fellowship at Steppenwolf. I always see a myraid of issues around how diversity is talked about or how we should talk about diversity. There is a whole population of people at this theater who approach diversity from different perspectives. You have people who are die hard fighters for the cause, you have those that know of the issue but are not neccessarily educated, and you have those that do not see a problem at all. In the mix of all that you have people who have a combination of all of these types of people. There are people who are outspoken and there are people who remain voiceless. There are people who are thinkers and people who are actors (they literally act, not the profession). There are so many different people that exsit in the context of theater that you can get lost in even who you are. The fighters and allies of diversity and inclusion have to constantly fight a discourse battle between reality and emotion and getting a dosage of both is a tricky balance as I am finding for myself. But within the ecosystem of American theater you must interact with many different forces and many different people. There are different theater cultures and ecosystems that get complicated in the biosphere of theater.
The question I constantly have about the term diversity, is what does a person mean when they say they want to “diversify” American theater? Or diversify anyplace for that matter. I certainly think in my examination of people’s thinking that they want to include and engage with nonwhite people. When looking at the ecology of diversity this is a good start. We typically know a breed of people they want to include nonwhite people. That’s awesome.
Then we get into the another level of people: the racializing of diversity. Typically when I hear people talk about including nonwhite people, they begin to look around at their own racial community. For me, I look toward African Americans because those are the people and the history that I know the best. In a lot of ways this makes since. We want to see our own community thrive and battle racial injustice by including in the ecology of hegemony a Black person. The problem that I have at times is looking outside of the Black community. I fight and champion for Black people to help diversify American theater. While that is essential to the ecology of theater and diversity it is not THE only organism that must be added to that majority white community. The danger of this thought is that we begin to focus on pinpointing one group to help diversify the ecosystem. To Steppenwolf’s credit, they discovered this problem. The Fellowship program that I am in began as an African American Fellowship hence only those who identified as African Americans could participate. Well suddenly we realize that our ecosystem is still homogenous wtih some new creatures sprinkled in to help diversify the place. What happens is that we are not truly diversifying. Instead we have an ecology in theater of “I may be white, but I do have Black friends.” We justify diversity by advocating for a set group and then closing the doors to even the small few that may want to be involved.
Well let’s say that we included another species that has long waited and fought their own struggles along side African Americans: Hispanics, Latino/as, and Chicano/as. So now we have added another organism to the ecosystem who will help diversify. Suddenly however, we run into another problem: the organisms have different perspectives and start to identify different needs. This is the next trap: comparative discrimination. The conversation starts to become a “I’ve been oppressed more than X group.” We start embattling on which community brings more diversity to the table because they have been the most hurt by the majority. So to gain entrance into the ecosystem, it becomes a fight between races. Sure we may have had many African American fellows at Steppenwolf, but very few of any other race. It’s not neccessarily the instiution’s fault but how the field surrounds the conversation about diversity as well as how people surround themselves around the ideas and discourse of diversity. This informs the ecology of diversity.
If the discourse and exchanges about diversity are going to continue to be effective, the ecosystem and its inhabitants must be expanded. Diversity is not only a color bind (which can be rather obvious), but the ecology includes other marginalized groups such as women, homosexuals, ability, religion, socioeconomic background among others. I believe if you are going to advocate for diversity, we must recognize that all marginalized groups are facing the same ecosystemic problem: a structure that is in place to selectively and carefully choose the ecology of diversity. So we must attempt to address all kinds of marginalized groups when discussing diversity. We have to look for adovcacy groups and schools to form partnerships with, look for foundations who are willing to fund theaters to diversify in new ways that include the color line which is still so desperately needed.
The ecology of diversity is filled with many different organisms and species that need to be heard and included in the ecosystem. But for that to happen we have to look with a wider gaze at the kinds of discourse we are engaging in. So ask yourself, what does diversity mean to you? Is it broad or is it limited?

Solly Two Kings