Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Black Super Hero Magic Mama

Play #131 - Black Super Hero Magic Mama by Inda Craig-Galván

This was the first of the plays off this year's Kilroys list that I happened to get my hands on, and it was (no surprise) a compelling script. The main character Sabrina Jackson is a single black mother who must deal with the death of her 14-year-old son Tramarion at the hands of a white police officer. Overcome with grief, she retreats inward into the world of the comic book hero The Maasai Angel - a character that had been created by her son and his best friend. Of course, family and news media and pretty much everyone have opinions about how she SHOULD be reacting to her loss - what she owes to the people, the movement, etc. And all these outside influences float in and out of her comic book fantasy, where she is actually able to vanquish them in their exaggerated, villainous personas. But all of her epic triumphs lead her closer to The Entity - the big bad that she must face, whether she is ready or not. BSHMM jumps back and forth between past and present, reality and fantasy, and concrete and abstract as it paints a portrait of a mother's suffering and strength in the face of the unthinkable, yet all too common.

It's a clever and heartfelt script that reminds me a bit of Qui Nguyen's She Kills Monsters, but with a much more pointed and mournful core - one that gives voice not only to loss, but to the swirling expectations that rise up after these kinds of tragedies (and yes, the fact that these occurrences are staggeringly plural is all too clear in this play), demanding that the people who have lost the most live up to some strange social responsibility. Without giving any spoilers, at first I thought that I wanted a little bit more from the ending - more resolution, perhaps? - but as I mulled over the vivid trajectory of the play, and the battles that Sabrina/Maasai Angel wages and wins, I think that the simplicity of the ending might be the point. In the aftermath of a shooting like the one in BSHMM, there is no magic battle that solves all problems and sets things right. Eventually there is just the day to day, the going on, the heroism of living. And Craig-Galván's play leads us on this deeply personal journey with action and heart.