THE HANGOVER REPORT – Alesha Harris’s electric WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT COMES DOWN is a rageful prayer from a bruised community

The company of the Movement Theatre Company's production of Aleshea Harris's "What to Send Up When It Goes Down" at A.R.T./New York Theatres. Photo by Ahron R. Foster.

The company of Movement Theatre Company’s production of Aleshea Harris’s “What to Send Up When It Goes Down” at A.R.T./New York Theatres. Photo by Ahron R. Foster.

This past weekend at A.R.T./New York Theatres, I caught Movement Theatre Company’s What to Send Up When It Comes Down by Aleshea Harris. The performance piece is a powerful response to the racially-driven police brutality that has long plagued the African American community in this country. In many ways, this ritualistic theatrical experience – it’s much more than merely a play – is a fitting, albeit a much more abstract and poetic companion piece to the histrionic American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown currently running on Broadway.

With What to Send Up When It Comes Down, Ms. Harris has penned a ferocious prayer of a play that immerses its audiences into the very heart of a community’s rage and refreshingly veers away from conventional narrative. The piece is a turbulent hybrid of disparate influences – art installation, church service, immersive theater, dance, straight play, concert, and performance art. Somehow, it all forcefully comes together because of the unifying anger that boldly underlines everything.

Whitney White has directed What to Send Up When It Comes Down with the aim of keeping its audiences on its toes and unsettled throughout. In this respect, she’s succeeded in spades. The ensemble work – kudos to the organic work of the hardworking cast of seven – here is visceral and electric. Their level of commitment to the play and its underlying raison d’être is simply astonishing; they give their all and then some. I was sucker-punched by the time the lights came up.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT COMES DOWN
Off-Broadway, Play
The Movement Theatre Company at A.R.T./New York Theatres (Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre)
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 8

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

Leave a Reply