For years I had been friends with Christopher Johnson on Facebook. It wasn’t until this past fall I actually had a chance to get together and speak with him in person. I had checked out some of his performances on youtube that he had posted and I really enjoyed his poetry and spoken word. “I want to pick your brain one day,” was the email I sent him. A month or so later we met for coffee to discuss writing and I checked out a couple of his shows over the months to come. Right around the time I met him, he told me he may be writing a play based on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (not to be confused with The Invisible Man, totally different). I never read the book Invisible Man, but According to this article and advertisement at Broadway.com it was “Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s masterpiece novel Invisible Man, Invisible UpSouth aims to challenge the way traditional theater-going audiences think about race and humanity and how they move through the world; how one can be well-educated and still blind to the world around them.”1. I know it was written in the 50’s and addresses the issue of feeling invisible in society as a black man. Christopher had taken this play and rewritten it into a present day black man in Providence RI, along with the assistance of Vatic Kuumba.
I knew I had to catch this show Sunday because it was closing day and I had promised I would show my support, plus, I really wanted to see this show! Now, I’ve seen a few of Christopher’s shows before and I know that this man has a way with words, but I was in no way prepared for this experience.
Continue reading “Invisible Upsouth”
Invisible Upsouth
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