De­siree See­baran

Watch­ing An Echo in the Bone is like hear­ing a faint rum­bling in the dis­tant clouds, on­ly to jump when a thun­der­clap goes off right above your head. I walked in ex­pect­ing the themes of en­slave­ment and dis­en­fran­chise­ment to ap­ply to "us" in the gen­er­al sense. But some­where in the process, it be­gins to be about us as in­di­vid­u­als too. And talk­ing to Tim­mia Hearn Feld­man, the play's di­rec­tor and the new as­sis­tant cre­ative di­rec­tor at the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW), con­firmed that.

Half Tri­ni and half Is­raeli, Hearn Feld­man said Echo is the per­fect way to cre­ative­ly ex­press her own com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry in T&T, since it is not on­ly her his­to­ry but the his­to­ry of the en­tire coun­try. "It's this mixed sto­ry of all these strange mixed peo­ple," Feld­man said. "This is TTW's first pro­duc­tion in a long time. And we want to do not just en­ter­tain­ment for en­ter­tain­ment's sake, but al­so en­ter­tain­ment for the sake of ex­plor­ing. So as we cel­e­brate Eman­ci­pa­tion and In­de­pen­dence, it felt like a very rel­e­vant show."

Orig­i­nal­ly set in Ja­maica, this read­ing of the play re­places the ac­tion in a sim­i­lar Trinidad vil­lage, and tweaks the di­a­logue to sound more Tri­ni while re­tain­ing all the same is­sues that sim­mer in the caul­dron of any West In­di­an post­colo­nial slave-based so­ci­ety. Try­ing to ex­plain the play chrono­log­i­cal­ly won't work, so I won't even try. It be­gins with an end-"This is the house ah de dead"-a wake for Crew, a mys­te­ri­ous man who nev­er ap­pears on stage ex­cept in spir­it. His tor­tured soul pos­sess­es his son, Son­son, who acts out brief scenes of his fa­ther's strug­gle for life and dig­ni­ty.

But it's not just Son­son who acts as a chan­nel for the spir­its of the past. All Crew's mourn­ers con­gre­gate, then go in­to a col­lec­tive trance as dif­fer­ent spir­its pos­sess them, us­ing them as ves­sels to give a pic­ture of their his­to­ries; scenes in which the ac­tors tran­si­tion from black and white an­ces­tors, to them­selves again, play­ing out the years and hours that lead up to Crew's death.

Most of the vi­gnettes are un­re­lat­ed and seem al­most ran­dom, but they give the view­er a crisp un­der­stand­ing of just how com­pli­cat­ed re­la­tion­ships were dur­ing slav­ery, sim­ply be­cause peo­ple are nev­er whol­ly evil or whol­ly pure, nev­er ei­ther black or white.

Each of the char­ac­ters has a his­to­ry: slaves crowd­ed on­to a stink­ing ship in the mid­dle pas­sage; an ex­pe­ri­enced white slave-buy­er who buys sis­ters, one for house­keep­ing and an­oth­er for breed­ing.

News of the Eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion comes in the form of a mes­sage from a doc­tor to a sick slave own­er. "Free? What does that mean? Who's go­ing to look af­ter them like I do?" the slave own­er, played by Glenn Davis, says piti­ful­ly. The slave woman he calls "Girl" hov­ers in the back­ground, con­cerned for his wel­fare, al­though he can't even re­mem­ber her name.

The on­ly one who does not go in­to trance is Rachel, Crew's wife. She's a rit­u­al­is­tic touch­stone, a role that con­trasts sharply with her very hu­man fail­ings, ex­posed near the play's cli­max. Rachel or­gan­is­es the wake; she alone knows why Crew mur­dered a white man, an un­for­giv­able crime for a black man in the 1930s. And she car­ries pal­pa­ble an­guish for the dead, for her sons and for her­self, each time she speaks.

As Rachel, Eve­lyn Cae­sar-Munroe is riv­et­ing. Her voice is prob­a­bly hoarse through a com­bi­na­tion of ill­ness and too many re­hearsals, but it car­ries a depth of pain, the sound of some­one who has wept too hard for too long. Rachel's sins make it easy for the au­di­ence to try to blame her rather than Crew for the mur­der he com­mits. But as Cae­sar-Munroe puts it, we can't judge Rachel's ac­tions un­til we walk in her shoes and know what it is like to make a choice be­tween moral­i­ty and sur­vival.

"I iden­ti­fy with Rachel be­cause Rachel is a very re­al char­ac­ter in so­ci­ety. For peace's sake, she will do what­ev­er she has to do to pre­serve her fam­i­ly," Cae­sar-Munroe added. "If we're re­al­ly hon­est, there are lots of Rachels walk­ing around in our so­ci­ety. We can't look down on the Rachels and the Crews, be­cause they have the right to be in this world too. What is our his­to­ry try­ing to tell us, and why is it ric­o­chet­ing in­to to­day's so­ci­ety?"

Yale School of Dra­ma MFA stu­dent Win­ston Duke as Son­son/Crew makes his de­but on a Trinidad stage in Echo. He's To­ba­go-born, but raised in the US from age ten, and his Amer­i­can ac­cent did slip out a few times, but his pres­ence on­stage is mas­ter­ful. He moves from Son­son's an­gry ado­les­cent awk­ward­ness to Crew's des­per­ate, rum-soaked stag­ger­ing with­out miss­ing a beat, us­ing his six feet-plus to dom­i­nate the stage.

Duke's read­ing of Crew's fi­nal re­quest to Mas­ter Char­lie is naked­ly vul­ner­a­ble, hold­ing the au­di­ence cap­tive in a bro­ken man's fi­nal bid for free­dom. And as Crew, Duke has some of the most beau­ti­ful lines in the play, about what it means to no longer be a slave but still not be free: "The land is every­thing! My fa­ther and grand­fa­ther sweat ...This is my birthright, to say I am not a slave any more!"

"I not go­ing to jail for this," he says af­ter his crime. "I suf­fer too long-300 years." But this is not a play that de­pends on the per­for­mance of star boys or girls. The char­ac­ters nev­er leave the wake/stage un­til the bit­ter end, even though many of the vi­gnettes on­ly re­quire two or three of the ten-mem­ber cast. So the uni­ty of the cast is vi­tal to the sur­vival and move­ment of the sto­ry. And the cast's abil­i­ty to work as a body on­stage is one of the best things about this play; move­ments and re­ac­tions are al­most in­stinc­tive, in­tu­itive.

In ad­di­tion, each char­ac­ter shines briefly: Arnold Goind­han, as the vul­gar Dream­boat, trans­forms in­to the painful­ly cor­rect en­slaved man who sells slaves on his mas­ter's be­half. Michael Cher­rie is as pow­er­ful­ly cru­el as Mas­ter Char­lie as he is ami­able as a vil­lager called Stone. Bridg­it (Taro­mi Joseph) gives a com­pelling ar­gu­ment for why she chose one broth­er over the oth­er: "I doh have any­thing. But I have the right to an­swer no."

And first-time ac­tor Idrees Saleem makes a strong show­ing as Jacko and as a hiss­ing, hos­tile run­away slave. Fig­ur­ing out the play's sub­plots will keep you en­gaged right up to the cli­max. And in the dark the­atre, as you watch all of our his­to­ries brought to life, you may-as Cae­sar-Munroe sug­gest­ed you should-find your­self in a char­ac­ter on­stage, bring­ing home the echo in the bone. "And if I do see me, am I hap­py? Can I re­spect the per­son that I see?" Munroe asked.

TTW's last per­for­mance of An Echo in the Bone will be staged to­day at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um. See the Arts Di­ary for tick­et in­for­ma­tion.