'Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us?'

it was very difficult to make this critique succinct. 

I read the play/I read the introduction/I read the preface/I read the included essays.

I read the play again.

(I decided that I would circle back here in the future)

this is my critique of Sonia Sanchez’s Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? at present.

Sanchez is my favorite playwright. her commitment to communal, accessible, inciting theatre has inspired the both the development and execution of my own theatrical works.

I first read Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? when I was about seventeen.

reading this play again was not easy.

and it’s not supposed to be.

like most of the plays during the Black Arts Movement, Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? is a call to action, directly targeting Black women. it is meant to disturb, to rile. 

and if it were ever produced, or read, it would do just that.

this critique is just as much about the play as it is the erasure of Black drama. 

though Sanchez’s wikipedia page suggests otherwise, in the anthology ‘I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Aint and Other Plays’ by Sonia Sanchez edited by Jacqueline Wood, Wood asserts that this play has never been produced, only published in Ed Bullins’ The New Lafayette Theatre Presents. the play’s lack of production does not surprise me, but it did help me further define the criteria I use when critiquing plays.

my college audition monologue was from this play, and yet, there is not a single character (out of the seventeen available roles) that I would want to be cast as. as someone who has trained as actor, I can’t help but consider the psychological toll roles such as the ones presented in this play may have on actors. 

in each scene, Black women are humiliated, mocked, belittled, and manipulated. 

there is no escaping it. and that is the point. 

the play is saturated with blatant disrespect and disregard for the condition of the Black woman, positioning Black men as the primary enactors of physical and emotional violence toward Black women. 

I don’t know that I would be able to perform the actions of these characters in rehearsal everyday. 

why can’t Black women play parts like Elle Woods? why can’t Black women have fun onstage? why must Black women constantly suffer?

I don’t believe in restricting the creativity of writers, and would encourage Black dramatists to write whatever characters they feel called to write, but I definitely think it’s valid to consider the impact a role could have on the mental and emotional health of Black performers.

I’d estimate the play’s run time to be thirty to forty five minutes. it is heavily rooted in spectacle, demonstrated by Sanchez’s frequent employment of sex and violence to articulate her message. the scenes depict the various ways in which Black women have been mistreated, each scene more painful than the last, and followed by dance numbers in which dancers illustrate the essence of the previous scene, simplifying the actions of the actors.

ultimately, the play is a critique on the oppressive misogynistic regimes implemented by the men of Black liberation movements. and it is necessary. but it does not need to be produced.

in the introduction of the previously mentioned anthology, Wood asserts that playwrights of the Black Arts Movement did not write with production or any other traditional theatrical ideals in mind, but she also goes on to mention that plays are effective vessels for social change because they don’t require literacy or privacy from the audience.

this makes sense in terms of performance, but considering that most of the dramas from the Black Arts Movement were published and not performed, approaching the creation of theatre with this mindset could easily serve as a hindrance. and it has.

Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? should not be produced for many reasons, but most logically because it’s structure. with a cast of seventeen, it is very improbable that this show can be produced in an equitable way. there is also far too much that is left to the will of the director, and that alone can change the entire message of the piece. it’s not a task I’d want to take on without Sanchez’s involvement.

however, in terms of study, Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? acts as a dissertation on the position of the Black woman in Black liberation movements of the late sixties and early seventies. though it is just as visceral, the play is easier to digest in written form, and a literary format allows the reader to take their time and process the examples provided. the path of analysis is basically laid out, as the scenes are almost coupled with corresponding dance numbers and by comparing the two, one should be able to begin to grasp the central themes of the work.

it should really make you quite angry. 

but as the focus was not on literary success or theatrical performance, Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? like many other plays of the Black Arts Movement, now exist to many as an irrationally angry phase of Black theatre. and many of the plays that were erected during this time have no record of occurrence. 

the literary preservation of dramatic works is very, very important.

production isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.