We find Moses and Kitch hanging in a crumby part of town. There’s a thick, formidable wall, garbage cans, a decrepit bench. Kitch grabs a can of spray paint and adds to the aimless graffiti. Moses and Kitch are close friends. They call each other: my nigger, which feels like an odd kind of affection. Conspiratorial, too. Their banter reminded me somewhat of George and Lenny from Steinbeck’s of Mice and Men. Not that Kitch is slow, but maybe not quite as smart as Moses. Kitch is gentle, less guarded than Moses.
Sometimes they talk about the brother that Moses lost, and how much Moses misses him. Much conversation ponders the promise of passing over from their destitute, desperate neighborhood, to the world beyond. Where success is a given. A done deal. There’s a reverie. The very mention sends Kitch howling and whooping with intense, authentic joy. Enough to break your eardrums, but it’s great. It comes up over and over. They makes list of what they will buy, once they are set up in the life of privilege.
The two white characters (both played by the same actor) in Pass Over are caricatures. An abusive cop and Mister: epitome of white cluelessness. His white summer suit and hat are the trappings of a dandy. But excessive politeness and straight-faced proclamations of Golly Gee! Make us wonder. Is he naive, or disingenuous? Is his behavior calculated, motivated by fear? Immediately Moses and Kitch’s radar kicks in.
Mister explains he was on his way to visit his mama, bearing gifts of delectable food. When he lays out a picnic for them (a gesture of good will) Kitch, so, so hungry, is delighted. He can’t wait to dive in, but Moses is deeply suspicious. Later the two more or less trap Mister in the “nigger” discussion. Like so many ignorant fucks, he doesn’t get that it’s been appropriated as an act of courage. Subversiveness. That it will NEVER sound the same coming from white lips.
Antoinette Nwanda has composed Pass Over as a gorgeous, chaotic concert of despair, oppression, anger, and defiance. She has woven biblical, spiritual imagery into the narrative, into this crushing unforgiving, twisted context. Words like ghettoizing, racism, arrogant don’t do the trick. When the scriptural moments break through, they are terrifying. How does Nwanda pull them off? Moses and Kitch were born into suffering, degradation, hopelessness endemic to their race. So submerged in quicksand they cannot tell their genuine friends from those who prey on them.
I grope to find the words to do right by Antoinette Nwanda. Pass Over has touched me more profoundly than any show in recent memory. It is stunning. Ferocious. Original and utterly unforgettable. A catch in the throat. This is what the best of theatre is all about.
Second Thought Theatre presents Antoinette Nwanda’s Pass Over, playing July 15th-30th, 2022. Bryant Hall on the Kalita Humphreys Campus. 3400 Blackburn Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75219. 214-897-3091. secondthoughttheare.com