The Party throws a party at Berkeley Rep
Panthers prowled my city. The city was Oakland, the time was the 1960s (I was a young art student at CCAC), and the panthers were members of the Black Panther Party. I had mixed feelings about them. I cheered their social programs for the disadvantaged, especially meals for kids, and I was appalled at the police brutality they faced. I wanted them to have all the equality I, a blue-collar white kid, experienced, but, wearing fierce looks, they were a little scary, and the famous photograph of Bobby Seale and Huey Newton toting rifles didn’t reassure me.
Of course reassurance wasn’t their aim. Justice was. And though the movement was short-lived, done in partly by J. Edgar Hoover’s sneaky COINTELPRO infiltration, it helped awaken the nation to injustice and to move it toward a fairer, though still imperfect, state.
In Chicago and New York a movement of people of Puerto Rican descent, called the Young Lords, modeled itself on the Panthers. It had a parallel influence and an equally short-lived history. It dissolved, as did the Panthers, in bickering and disarray, but both organizations earned an important hegemony for a while, and now they’re back, at Berkeley Rep, in a provocative and intoxicating new musical called Party People.
The brainchild of the theater ensemble, Universes (Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, and William Ruiz), Party People had its first outing at Oregon Shakespeare a couple of years ago. Revisited and reconceived, it bursts on the Rep’s thrust stage with a vibrant quarter hour of singing and dancing, in jazz and hip-hop and salsa styles, that summarizes the pre-history and history of the two organizations.
Universes’ aim is to bring the Panthers and the Lords back into our line of sight, to honor what they did, but also to offer up their story, warts and all, honestly–they aim for nostalgia with a clear eye.
It’s an exceedingly lively eye, with a view serving up their tale in sizzling style. The production rocks with brash music and rivets us with emotional ups and downs–a confrontation between a distraught woman whose cop-husband was gunned down and the black man who may have pulled the trigger, for example. There are, as well, head-buttings between former members who still nurse grievances about their internecine past. Nonetheless the overall effect is joyful. Set decades after the 60s, during an exhibition of Panther and Lord memorabilia organized by children of the founders, the show is a celebration.
Director Liesl Tommy helped shape the material and helmed the production, too, with admirable help from Marcus Doshi (sets and lighting), Meg Neville (costumes) Millicent Johnnie ( choreography), Broken Chord (sound, vocal direction and music), and Alexander V. Nichols (projections). In addition to Universe’s trio, the lively, intensely watchable cast includes J. Bernard Calloway, Michael Elich, Christopher Livingston, Amy Lizardo, Jesse J. Perez, Sophia Ramos, Robynn Rodriquez, William Ruiz, Reggie D. White and C. Kelly Wright.
A rockin’ pleasure, Party People plays on Addison Street until November 16th, followed by Kathleen Turner in Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins. For tickets/information call 647-2949 or visit www.berkeleyrep.org.
“ROBERT HALL