After a weekend full of protests throughout Baton Rouge and with tensions between police and the black community rising, New Venture Theatre is hoping to spark a conversation about racism and racial profiling with their production of “Hands Up! Seven Playwrights, Seven Testaments,” this Saturday at the Claude L. Shaver Theatre.
The play features a diverse group of seven African-American playwrights from all walks of life who share their experiences of being black in America and discuss the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It actually started off as just a workshop piece to see what could come from it, but what they ended up with is this very well told story from all these very different perspectives on how we view Black Lives Matter and where our place is in their world,” said Greg Williams Jr., one of the production’s playwrights.
Williams’ monologue is called “Walking Next to Michael Brown.” Brown was an unarmed black male fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, igniting civil unrest in the community.
As a light-skinned African American, Williams said he has never experienced having the police called on him because of his skin color or been the target of racial profiling. In his monologue, Williams says he wishes he could go back and be with Brown the day he was fatally shot.
“I want to go back just to help and protect him, but what I end up doing is realizing that I have issues that I need to deal with myself and my color throughout the process,” Williams said.
The timing of the production with what is happening in the Baton Rouge community was purely coincidental, Williams said. The group received word of the Alton Sterling shooting during their first rehearsal.
“In the middle of our first rehearsal with the director, our stage manager had come in and told us what happened and we instantly knew then that piece had turned into much more and there was a responsibility attached to it,” Williams said. “And all of a sudden all of these monologues became very personal.”
The cast hopes this production will start a healthy discourse about the Black Lives Matter movement and racial profiling.
“One of my favorite lines is that ‘we’re all human,’ and I want people to get past issues and see that Black Lives Matter is really about a group of human beings in this country,” Williams said. “It’s not just a group of black people that want to protest. There are reasons for all of these things and this is our chance to tell those in a safe space.”
“Hands Up! Seven Playwrights, Seven Testaments” is coming to LSU Claude L. Shaver Theatre Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $22.