The ghostly room is some kind of waiting room between the inhabitants’ recent murders and whatever awaits them next.
A Black man, young and disheveled, stands alone in a strange room, bare save for a single folding lawn chair, an old printer, and a steep skateboard slide. He stares out at the audience, wondering why they're watching him. From time to time, the ancient dot-matrix printer rattles to life, spitting out pages the man would rather not have to read.
One after another, two other Black men join him, sliding down that steep, white incline. Equally disheveled and even more bewildered, they wonder where they are? What brought them here? Who are these other people? Why is this audience watching their every move?
So begins James Ijames’s Southern California premiere of “Kill Move Paradise” at the Odyssey theatre in West Los Angeles, directed by Gregg T. Daniel.
What unfolds is a parable of Black life in an America that targets one unarmed Black man after another—and some unarmed Black women—for violent death at the hands of police forces purportedly designed to protect them, their names spit out ominously from the printer.
The ghostly room, of course, is some kind of purgatory, a waiting room between the inhabitants’ recent murders and whatever awaits them next—hell or paradise.
In time, a fourth Black man slides down to join them, a boy, really, with a colorful toy machine gun in his arms, ever so much like Tamir Rice, the 10-year-old boy playing alone with a toy rifle in a Cleveland park when the local gendarmes roll up to shoot him before he can say a word.
As they wait, the quartet began to dimly recall the violence that brought them there, making connections to one another, and celebrating their shared culture, including breaking into a smile-inducing doo-oop rendition.
James Ijames has said that he hopes one day people we “don’t need to do this play anymore because we are different. We are better.”
We’re far from there yet.
The stellar cast includes Ulato Sam, Ahkei Togun, Jonathan P. Sims, and Cedric Joe.
Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West LA. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm Wed., Sept. 25 and Oct. 16, 8 pm; thru Nov. 3. 310.477.2055 X2; www.OdysseyTheatre.com Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission.
