Prelude
A friend calls monthly, like one would check in with a therapist. A mutual acquaintance has brought her to tears multiple nights. Who is open to just listening beyond me? Our years together, she’s earned my patience. But one night she stopped and asked about me. How was I really? What was going on in my life?
I told her nothing, just readings. She asked then I went for it, telling her: I’m about to do a full weekend of poetry readings– three straight days. Pick any night you’d like. I sent her the flyer. By then, I’d gone out of my comfort zone and invited another person to ‘support’ me at what felt like was going to be a special event. Special for me, at least. Performances in a theater where I could do what I want. Come on down!
Three minutes later– slam poem length–after sending the flyer, she texted back: “No, I think I better pass.” Was the flyer that bad?
The other person I invited didn’t show up to any night and sent no apologies nor encouragement.
On the final reading, I swore a person out of the corner of my eye in the front row was someone I knew. When the lights came up, it was a stranger. Similar build and clothing choices, but a stranger still.
That’s the whole story of why I rarely invite anyone to any readings and usually show up alone.
End.
Featured Readers
This calendar year I did 23 features. That includes: 1 Classroom visit, 1 Storytelling night for KALW radio, 2 Zoom calls. 1 Barbershop. 1 Backyard. 2 libraries. 1 Afro-futuristic sci-fi story. 1 afternoon where I read back to back at two different readings. And minus 2 readings I said I’d do only to blow them off at the last minute out of exhaustion. The rest were bars and bookstores. What I’m concentrating on today is The Potrero Stage where I read three consecutive nights for Afro Solo.
Afro Solo Theater Company has been a San Francisco mainstay for more than 30 years. Run by Thomas Simpson, its been an invaluable presence and support for African American storytelling and performance. Thomas’s company saved my life one year, allowing me to work in the office and on stage back when I was between jobs. He saved me again during the pandemic by commissioning a new poem while the world was on house arrest.
One day Thomas called asking I reserve three days for him, for a festival knicknamed: “Go Soar! Black Performance Series”. I immediately agreed even as I already felt exhausted just thinking about it. It takes energy to be present representing the work and it takes a while for me to come down and easily sleep. But I anticipated the three night run because I hadn’t done anything like it before. Each of the three nights would be completely different. I didn’t want to bore myself.
The first was Halloween night. My first mistake was not triple-checking where I was going then ending up on 18th Ave instead of 18th St. My corrective Lyft drove through a couple of well-off neighborhoods haunted with cute children in capes and frilly dresses, garnished with color and masks. Caped dads pushing baby carriages past low budget movie-sets assembled on front lawns. Thomas encouraged costumes and the best I managed was a Star Trek uniform sweat-shirt with an Enterprise emblem. (SPOILER: no one else either audience or on stage acknowledged Halloween).
The value of Afro Solo is its encouragement and acceptance of voices and stories and styles. The other performers that night included Darlene, whom I’d first met back when I began my poetry journey. It was rare seeing her and thrilling for me to reconnect. She explained over the years she’s been singing jazz, but during the festival returned to spoken word and opened the show with a near Sermon. JJ Jackson was a visual artist but for the event told a story from his childhood about family and attending church services. Augustiene was a storyteller and shared a brief clip of Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl before sharing story of watching and listening to his performance for the first time that night.
Finally, there was Unique Derique— a physical comedian and performer formerly with the Pickle Family Circus. Derique was better and more professional than all of us, doing a dedication to Black performers in the history of dance and mime. Truthfully, the event was solidly produced and each night it started precisely on time and ended early evening, which was ideal as I didn’t feel burned out when I got home.
Performance
Each night I sat backstage alone and listened to the other performers and thought of all the years doing this, waiting in the wings for my turn to read. I was excited to just share, to be there. I walked out on stage.
There’s no way of determining what an audience wants, so I have to be audience and first appease myself. All the poems considered for the weekend were poems that fit easily in my mouth, poems with lively language and that were fun for me to read. Poems that had strong narratives or visuals. Poems I felt confident about.
The first night, Halloween, I decided to read all ghost poems, and as it turns out I have several. I put my phone on the podium to record myself and started. I get to the end of the first poem and…
The audience waits. There’s no applause, no seat rustling. No grunts, No nuthin. No one even got up to go to the bathroom or just blatantly leave. I remembered right then– applause is how I get paid. My past at open mics and slams– i was used to audience acknowledgment if not ‘interaction.’ To be clear, applause here isn’t ‘approval’. I didn’t need to be cheered. But what I wanted was acknowledgment that I’d been heard. Public Speaking freaks out a lot of people because usually we’re not used to being the center of attention. I’m not thirsty for attention, neither am I scared of public speaking– I’m scared of an audience that doesn’t realize its alive. Being heckled isn’t fun but at least it gives me something to work with. When you’re in front of people, you can feel them listening, watching, expecting. There’s an electrical, living energy there. Applause lets me know I can talk with the room, gives me confidence that they’re present and ready for whatever. To meet ‘attentive silence’ throws me a little, because there’s no sense that what was just said meant anything or was even clearly heard by anyone. I met the wall of silence and was put off balance a bit. I thought: this is how they assume they should behave in ‘Theatre’. I went on, slightly uneasy. The silence made me spontaneously edit and change the poems I wanted to do. Not: “What would you guys like to hear…?” Audiences don’t know, they just showed up. It was instead: “How do I address the silence?” The silence made me feel lonely. Muted some of my courage. I chickened out of some poems related to Jason in the Friday the 13th movies, for example. I finished my set and immediately sent my recording to one of my sisters. The silence made me want to reach out to someone, anyone on earth, I knew.
The rest of the weekend went smooth and identical. I relegated myself to accept the silence and now don’t remember if there was any applause the remaining two nights. I relaxed into narrative poems. I kept recording and forwarding the readings to my sister who only responded to me stumbling over words. Thomas meanwhile offered minor adjustments for the next two nights. For me, he off-handedly mentioned the phrase ‘church folks’ and ‘language’ after I used a ‘F-word’ in one of my poems. Is that why the room was so quiet? An audience of elder-church folk? I would have still done the poem.
I organized the remaining nights as I would for any public reading for strong imagery and my comfort with the poems. You can judge for yourself– one of the readings is on Youtube.
On the final night, the stage manager acknowledged my Commander Picard uniform., which was the extent of my mingling. An afterparty of elders is probably folks changing into night-wear and taking bedtime meds. My afterparty was a shower and a quiet dinner. Its weird to consider: The earliest memory I have is sitting on the sofa between my parents and, as if showing off a new trick I learned, reading to them from some Jack and Jill children’s book while my mother turned and clicked on the table lamp. That moment rolled concentric circles through the rest of my life.
The Dirty Rat 