Beneatha (Kalyne Coleman) and Ruth (Chevon Boone)
By Elizabeth Mensah
For all those who did not find themselves navigating to Class of ’49 at some point on the weekend of February 18-19, let me be the first to inform you of the gravity of your mistake! Kicking off the celebration of their 20th Anniversary, The African American Arts Alliance presented “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, providing us with a dose of thoughtful entertainment and a glimpse into the lives and struggles of black Americans in the 1950’s. My fellow attendees can attest to the zestful flavor of the audience experience as it provoked our inclusion through active participation. Particularly solicitous of reaction was the well-rehearsed Nigerian accent of Keith Williams, a Wharton Senior who played the role of David Asagai, a West-African pan-Africanist who wooed the doctor-aspirant Beneatha (Kaylne Coleman) with his intellect and romanticism. Having donned his sweetheart with a Yoruba name he supposedly could not translate into English, Asagai’s first lines “Hello, Ilyo” had the crowd rolling.
As a strong supporter of 4A and admirer of artists in general, I cannot help but acknowledge both the new and familiar faces that appeared on the Raisin in the Sun program. I definitely want to lift up Chevon Boone (‘13) who delivered so believably in both the Fall and Spring show. It was clear that freshman Kalyne Coleman really jumped into character; Seniors Keith Williams and Joseph Wyatt took the stage in their first plays this semester, bringing their humor and personality to the stage. Adam Hamilton (Walter) displayed well the complexity of his character. Congratulations to the cast and crew on a remarkable production, and we hope to see more of 4A in the future!
Aside from singing the praises of the brilliant cast and crew, I want to return for a moment to the question of dualities that the article opened with. “Soul of the Entertainer” not only featured fictional characters who were both performers and real people with real problems—it featured student performers who not only performed for the show, but who also are well known around campus as performers. In the second set, performers such as College sophomore Steven Allen (a rising alternative singer-songwriter with a Thom Yorke-esque lyrical articulation and the voice of a raspless Chad Kroeger), College senior Joya Jones (R&B, soul, gospel vocalist extraordinaire and proud member of the New Spirit of Penn Gospel Choir), and College senior David Warner (spoken word artist and veteran member of Penn’s premier spoken word collective, The Excelano Project) graced the stage with performances that were consistent with the brilliant work they regularly do on campus. This intentional linking of reality and fiction, of past and present, of performance and observance does much to blur the line between these aforementioned binaries. In other words, 4A’s “Soul of the Entertainer” seems to be resisting suggestions that the everyday person and the entertainer are mutually exclusive concepts. Perhaps, instead, the production is suggesting something more along the lines of a continuum of performance and simply “being yourself” (if such a thing exists). That maybe performing is a rendition of being oneself, and “being oneself” is yet another leg of the same concept. The ways we choose to perform or to observe or to “stay true to ourselves” are still choices and are still done in ways specific to us thus, still containing something characteristic of us.
