Notes From The Field
Notes From The Field at Timeline Theater is a profound and lucid narrative confronting the racial division within your country. It brilliantly uses three women to portray individualized conversations with executives, professors, academic scholars, and those caught up in the vicious school-to-prison pipeline. This resilience production introduces us to 19 real-life people from over 250 actual dialogues and accounts, concentrating on the United States' focus on incarceration over education. The play, directed by Mikael Burke, features the talented playwright Anna Deavere Smith, widely known for her renowned On the Road series. In this play, Anna interviews a diverse group of individuals who belong to communities that are currently facing critical issues. Throughout the play, Anna references various calculated events, adding a sense of realism to the storyline.
The cast features Mildred Marie Langford, Adhana Reid, and Shariba Rivers, who performed outstandingly. Shariba Rivers' galvanizing and sterling rendition of Pastor Jamal Harrison Bryant was compelling and inspiring, capturing the mystical movement Bryant calls for justice during Freddie Gray's eulogy. Mildred Marie Langford's dramatic portrayal of a woman in prison as an accomplice to the murder of her boyfriend, who killed a man trying to rape her, will send chills to your spine as she reflects on her acceptance of needing the rehabilitating corrections that the prison system has forced on her through her help of training dogs for people with disabilities —demonstrating her expression of love towards the dogs; a love she never received in life, from judicial and correctional systems that decided to incarcerate her. Adhana Reid as Niya Kenny, a young woman, videotapes a classmate's arrest. Using real-life footage cascading in the background, Reid describes the trauma of witnessing a black girl in her class thrown to the floor and flung across the room by a white male officer. Whether discussing systemic injustices, bias stigmas, or educational disparities, where, according to the American Psychological Association, Black students in the US are more likely to experience educational disparities than white students, Notes From The Fields pushes the envelope on the need for social change in America.
Notes From The Field is a cry for justice and parity when others seek to deflect and condemn. It points out our historical divisiveness, seeking the righteousness of humanity, which has too long closed its eyes to give an account of its past. However, this is not the typical play seen at most Chicagoland theaters. Kudos to Timeline Theater for opening its doors to this bold, introspective, provocative, yet intrusive production. It's a play that will make some feel awkward, with others being somewhat defensive when its main objective is to educate, inform, and rekindle conversations of equality and the lack thereof for people of color.
“ I’m loud because you don’t hear my silent cry for justice and equality ”
The goal of Let's Play Theatrical Review has always been to bring more diversity to the theater and those filling its seats; however, I felt uncomfortable and troubled while reviewing this production when Rivers, in the role of Pastor Bryant, made comments about black men wearing their pants below their underwear that received laughter from some of the white audience members—invoking thoughts of white Americans' perception that all black men are lazy, scary, and thieves and all black women as loud, moody, too straightforward, and angry. Still, when the issues of racism were discussed, they seemed indifferent, reacting tangential and exonerating themselves from the historical sinful plight and past of our nation — and when the second act began, some made the decision not to return. The troubling trend dates back to the 1857 Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney dismissed the humanness of those of African descent. This legal precedent permitted the image of African Americans, reducing them to negative caricatures in popular culture.
Notes From The Field symbolizes that same call from Joshua to the 12 tribes in Isreal that removed stones from the riverbed as a memorial to God's love when they crossed the Jordan River, which He has stopped miraculously—which reminds us that we as a people should remember the pains of the bondage placed on others simply because of the different hues. We should not run from it, ignore it, and be silent, but embrace and learn from it so we never follow that road again. Well, at least, this is what I got from the play.
Lastly, I caught a glimpse of the actors' shadows as they portrayed these real-life characters and witnessed the visualization of the horrific testimonies of enslaved people drowning in the Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade brought to America, not as humans, but as cattle or products. If you see this play, look at the actors' shadows that protrude against the walls. It's a ghostly reminder of the silent stories of those unseen and unheard that only the shadows of those oppressed can display.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Timeline Theatre Company
Notes From The Fields
Written by Anna Deavere Smith
Directed by Mikael Burke
January 31 - March 24, 2024
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