Forever, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith (on commission from Center Theater Group), is a solo play which deals with life and death in a brave, rawly powerful way. Orlandersmith, a much-feted African-American poet, playwright and actor, centers her monologue on a recent visit she made to Paris’ Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where some of her personal heroes are buried: Apollinaire, Edith Piaf, Richard Wright, Jim Morrison. They represent the family she created for herself after leaving the family she was born into. The arts, in effect, gave her the kind of supportive home she never had as a child.
Orlandersmith grew up in Harlem and was raised by a single mother, a hard-drinking, mentally-unbalanced black woman who abused her unmercifully, both verbally and physically. Orlandersmith’s childhood recollections are steeped in anger and resentment, but at the same time, she credits her mother with having imbued her with a love for literature and music. In fact, she made the pilgrimage to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery largely because it was a place her mother had always wanted to visit.
Much of Orlandersmith’s play deals with her intense, complex relationship with her mother, but she also riffs, in fiery punk-rock fashion, on some other parts of her life, such as leaving Harlem for the East Village in the 70s and 80s, discovering poets like Patti Smith and Jim Morrison.
But those coming-of-age years were filled with pain and cruelty, as well, mostly inflicted by her mother. But the major trauma in her life occurred when she was raped, a brutal experience that Orlandersmith describes with devastating artistry and honesty.
Forever concludes with the death of Orlandersmith’s mother, an experience that the performer also confronts fearlessly. This is one artist who does not flinch in the face of darkness and dissolution.
