NOLA Project’s ‘The Colored Museum’ satirizes stereotypes, celebrates Black culture
7th March 2024 · 0 Comments
By Josie Abugov
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — At performances of “The Colored Museum” over the next two weeks, there will be no curtains or plush red seats. There will not even be a stage. Instead, the audience will watch the show largely on their feet, from five different spots inside and surrounding the New Orleans African American Museum.
The immersive setting accentuates the structure of George C. Wolfe’s 1986 play, which unspools not through traditional narrative but through a series of eleven vignettes that satirize Black stereotypes and celebrate Black culture.
“The Colored Museum” is the first show of the year for local theater company The NOLA Project. After two discounted preview shows last week, the production is in full swing over the next two weekends with more than a dozen showtimes.
The show also marks The NOLA Project’s return to the stage after its split from the New Orleans Museum of Art, where the thespians held outdoor performances at the museum’s sculpture garden and inside its grand hall over the course of a 12-year partnership. While the two groups dispute the details of the rift last fall, the groups’ disagreement over whether the art museum was willing to house the provocative show in its space ultimately led to the split.
The African American Museum later offered the theater group a home for the production. Staging a play written by a Black playwright with an entirely Black cast at a Black cultural institution reflects the goals the company had put into place in 2020. That year, the then mostly-white company underwent a reckoning in terms of its racial inclusivity. The group pledged to better reflect the majority-Black city of New Orleans with the diversity of its ensemble, the playwrights whose work they perform, and the members of the board.
“Overall, morale is way up,” said Monica Harris, the NOLA Project’s interim managing director. From the managerial level to the ensemble logistics, Harris said the new partnership with the African American Museum has been “absolutely lovely.”
Cameron-Mitchell Ware, creative producer at the African American Museum, said he personally knew many members of The NOLA Project as a thespian and New Orleans native himself. Showcasing “The Colored Museum” at the museum felt like a no-brainer, he said.
“It’s ‘The Colored Museum’ and we are the African American Museum, right?” he said. “I think we, with authority, we get to say that when it comes to the non-myopic but full breadth of the expressions of Blackness and joy, we get to hold that down. We get to – colloquially as we might say – stand on the business of presenting and preserving culture.”
Directors Tenaj Wallace and Toriano Hayward said audiences have so far responded well to the performances, which mark the first time a New Orleans company has put on “The Colored Museum.” For instance, in the opening scene, flight attendants welcome audience members aboard “The Celebrity Slaveship,” a commercial airline “making short stops at Bahia, Port Au Prince, and Havana,” before reaching the “final destination of Savannah.” Wallace and Hayward, who are Black, recall the skepticism among some Black audience members watching the performance of all-Black actors.
“Then, it starts to reveal itself, pulling the little onion layers back,” Wallace explained. “But initially, if you don’t know what you’re walking into, it seems like a very confusing situation.”
Hayward similarly noted the reaction among the non-Black audience members during another vignette of the show, “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play,” which subverts archetypes of family relationships seen in Black theater. Beginning with a conversation between a mama on her couch and her son, who rails against “the Man,” the vignette satirically nods toward plays like “A Raisin in the Sun” and “For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf” before farcically transforming into an upbeat Black musical, a realm where no one dies. (The son in that vignette is played by DC Paul, a co-host of Verite’s Porch Poppin’ series.)
“A couple of the white audience members were like, ‘Should I laugh at that? I don’t think I should,’” Hayward said. “And that’s the point.”
Rahim Glaspy plays Miss Roj, a trans woman and extraterrestrial who reflects on her hardships and superpowers while drinking at a gay bar. Drawn to Miss Roj’s realness and passion, Glaspy has wanted to play the character since he was a teen. “We’re not a parody, right? Because parody is to make fun of,” he said. “No, we’re satire, which is to point a mirror toward with a little humor.”
In staging the play on the African American Museum’s grounds, Ware also hopes to spotlight the artistry of playwright Wolfe and other queer Black men who have contributed to pop culture. “Flowers to him while he’s still alive is really, really important,” Ware said.
Those interested in attending can purchase tickets online for evening and matinee performances through March 9, and in-person at the museum less than two hours before each showtime Accessibility accommodations are available.
This article originally published in the March 7, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
