The Politics of Art & Authenticity

I’m usually not a person of many words. It’s not that I don’t like to talk, it’s simply because most of the time there is nothing really to talk about. Out of all the cultural events that we have attended because of this class, I think Wild With Happy has been the best so far.

In a way it has been the one I identify with the most.  It’s not the actual story, but the themes and situations within in.

I loved the location. The Public Theater was unlike some of the other theaters I have been to before. It was small, and the actors actually walked into the audience section of the theater. I got to say that the scenography was great. In the opening scene, the caskets at the funeral home transform into a park bench, a car, and into a closet. The use of the caskets in that way made it seem like it wasn’t as dark as one would expect s funeral home to be.

Colman Domingo wrote Wild With Happy, he is also the leading man.  The story is about a gay black man who’s in a way going through some sort of mid-life crisis.  While going through it, he neglected his mother, who in the end, we learn had Lupus, which was her cause of death.

Gil [Domingo] is an actor who holds a degree in English from Yale. Yes, it stuck. Just couldn’t help the fact that it was mentioned every five seconds.  Yet, with degree and all, he can’t find a decent job that takes him from living paycheck to paycheck to a somewhat comfortable life.  When he receives the call that his mother is dead, he heads down to Philly, hoping to take care of everything as quickly and cheaply as possible. He chooses not to follow ‘black’ tradition and instead cremates his mother. The play continues with Aunt Glo, Gil’s aunt, giving him a hard time because he chose not to follow tradition. And instead we see Gil running away to NYC and ending up in Orlando at the Disney Park because of his best friend Mo.

The last scene reveals a lot about Gil, but I think, that in revealing so much about a gay black man we learn a lot about ourselves. Sometimes we don’t follow tradition, and it’s okay to break from it. Trying something radical is good once in a while.

Overall, the plot of the play was maybe something that not everyone will identify with, but it definitely represents a real situation. It shows a lot of human emotion, which made it enjoyable, at least for me.