[Festwochen. Penultimate time for this year.] The Shipment is a play by Young Jean Lee, starring Jordan Barbour, Mikeah Ernest Jennings, Prentice Onayemi, Douglas Scott Streater and Amelia Workman.

Plot:
The Shipment is a play about race and how African Americans are perceived in today’s society. It is divided into four very different parts, starting with a short dance, then a stand-up piece, after that we get a rather stereotypical life story of a black teen who wants to become a rapper but goes to prison instead, delivered in an intersting way, and finally, there’s a more traditional scene with a twist.

The play was very well acted and raised some intersting points. Being not a complete newby in the conversations about race, it wasn’t exactly eye-opening to me, but I found myself nodding along quite empathically at a few scenes. But despite it’s pretty big agenda, it never becomes preachy or boring, but is very enjoyable.

The first part, the dance, was a nice introduction, but ultimately completely forgettable (in fact, I had started this review writing about the three parts of the show until I saw the above picture and remembered it).

The second part, the stand-up walked along the edge of my comfort zone – it was pretty loud and rather aggressive and had poop-jokes, all of which I don’t like in my comedy. But there were very intelligent bits and it did make me laugh, just not as hard as you’d expect from a comedy programme.

The third part was great – as I said above, it was basically a sequence of stereotypes, telling the life of Omar, a young guy wanting to become a rapper. But the actor delivered it as if they were automatons, completely mechanical and without emotions and really fast. It was really funny and that delivery, of course, makes it really open to interpretation. And it ended in the most beautiful acapella version of Dark Center of the Universe.

The fourth part was the longest piece and kinda the grand finale, but ultimately the part that, for me, said the least bit about race. [SPOILERS] The scene’s a dinner party, Thomas celebrating his birthday, having invited four friends. It’s all rather upscale, they all seem to have good jobs, they do coke etc. In the middle of the party, Thomas has a nervous breakdown, first telling everybody they were poisoned by him and finally dissolving into a sobbing mess. While they wait for help to arrive, they start playing a game and start to make fun of blacks. And then one of them says, “I’m just not comfortable with this. I don’t think we would be doing it if a black person was actually here.” (Keep in mind that the cast was all black.) [/SPOILERS] And my reaction was, “So, that’s it? I didn’t even think about their skin color in that scene and you make that the big reveal? Huh.” It just seemed inconsequential.

But big reveal or no reveal – it was a good scene, and it was very well acted and altogether, I did like the play.

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After the show, Young Jean Lee and the actors stayed on for a talk with the audience. It was really interesting, especially since they had a lot of very intelligent things to say.

Unfortunately, the audience was… in German, we have the expression “Fremdschämen”. It’s when you feel utter, undiluted shame for the actions or words of somebody else, because they seem completely oblivious to how embarassed they should be. That was my reaction during that talk. There was this one guy who asked the actors where they were all from (which is fine, of course) and every time the actors would answer like, “South Carolina”, he would inject some geographical point like “Charleston”… “New Jersey” “ahhh, near New York”, “California” “Close to which city there? LA?” etc. And then the guy started waxing about how he was surprised that there were no white women in the play, because the combination of white woman and black man is just so powerful and I just wanted the earth to open up to put him out of my misery… Man.