Stage Review - Living IncogNegro (Key City Public Theatre)
Stage Review - Living IncogNegro
Presented By: Key City Public Theatre (KCPT) - Port Townsend, WA
Show Run: February 1 - February 11, 2024
Date Reviewed: Friday, February 2, 2024 (Opening Night)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
There are many inspirations that can drive the genesis of new works, from real world political or social situations, to what-if ponderings that can lead to some fantastical examples of live theatre, or to personal experiences that develop into something more autobiographical. Sometimes, it’s just a question, like “What happens when your cultural identity is one thing, but your physical identity is another?”. That seems like a simple question, but it’s so much more than that. In Gin Hammond’s new one-woman show, of which she is both the playwright and performer, she asks this question, pulling on her life experience as a light skinned black woman in America to examine how having a physical identity that is different than her cultural identity has impacted and continues to inform her life, from her childhood, through dating, marriage, and beyond. In Living IncogNegro, on stage at Key City Public Theatre and directed by KCPT’s Artistic Director Denise Winter, Gin navigates her way through multiple worlds in search for answers to questions such as “How does what I look like and where I come from impact my ability for self-expression?”, or “How do I deal with people in my family, friend, and romantic relationships who treat me one way based on how I look and another when they learn about my heritage?” It is a show that feels part TED Talk, part dramatic self-reflection on a challenging life of navigating culture and race in America, and it is extremely good.
Gin examines a number of aspects of culture, heritage, and personality in Living IncogNegro. From her time as a youth, wondering why her brother, he of darker skin than she, was the subject of racially directed ridicule when she wasn’t, despite sharing the same parentage and DNA, to being labeled as “exotic” when people (mostly white) can’t exactly figure out which box to fit her in. And on labeling, she addresses this as well, the good and bad of applying them in a society that lives by its categories. On language, she muses on code switching, changing inflection and dialect depending on the situation, and on the importance of language in self-identification and expression. She discusses performative race, the many and changing terms and phrases people use to describe color, and how it feels necessary sometimes to pretend that you’re someone your not, just to avoid conflict. There’s an enlightening piece where Gin walks through the many descriptions of color in other countries, a scene which includes some audience participation. The bit feels a bit on the long side, though that’s part of the point. She covers so many aspects of her life and experience to provide context to the question she challenges herself with in the play, but Living IncogNegro is so well constructed, it never feels preachy or as though she’s portraying herself as a victim. Living IncogNegro highlight’s Gin Hammond’s strength, both as a playwright and a performer.
And on the performing piece, Gin Hammond has quite the personality, it’s magnetic. She has a way of drawing the audience into a story, keeping them on the edge of their seats to see where she’s going, and then delivering. And on opening night at Key City Friday, she did that time and again, relating stories from her life, each relevant to a particular aspect of the point that she weaved through the evening, all told honestly and with a dramatic flair that spotlights Gin’s ability to embody the real life characters she portrays in her recollections, especially those with accents, her ability with dialects providing some of the best moments of the evening, the best example of her date at an Italian restaurant, this one as well with some audience participation.
Living IncogNegro is technically a one-woman show, and yes, it is Gin Hammond’s story, written and performed by her. She’s not alone on stage, though. Michelle Cesmat, who is also responsible for the scenic design of the show, is a portrait artist, and here she helps support Gin’s performance through live drawings and textual musings, each displayed on a monitor that hangs from the ceiling, a monitor that also presents videos, segment titles, and other media pieces that help to drive the storytelling. Gin presents her work both from behind a podium, using script prompts, and from other locations on stage, sitting or standing, whichever that she and Director Denise Winter have decided works best to make her particular point in the play. There’s a lot of help here from lighting designer Karen Anderson and sound designer Dalin Costello, each of whom have clearly worked hand in hand with Gin and Denise to coordinate the emotional punch of each scene. A prime example of this work coming together are scenes when Gin sits on stage, illuminated only by a light from above, obscuring her so that she’s a silhouette, focusing the audience’s attention on the message and not the messenger, and in turn adding some gravitas to the spoken words. The play is still under development of course, the opening night audience was the second to have seen a completed version, but as good as this is, I’d love to see a version where Gin presents it without the podium and script prompts. When it’s fully fleshed out and she can present the entirety of the play with the dramatic and emotional punch that the scenes away from the podium have, I feel like the show will go from excellent, as it is now, to outstanding, right up there with one-woman shows like Priyanka Shetty’s Elephant in the Room (which Gin smartly quotes in this show) or Madeline Sayet’s Where We Belong.
A final note, this one specific to the opening night performance, and around Gin’s maturity as a performer as well as the beauty of live theatre. Opening night was not without its challenges From a patron’s mobile phone randomly blasting an emergency weather alert, to another treating the play like it was a conversation, calling back to Gin after what seemed like at least every other line, Gin just rolled with each of them, even interacting with the “cell phone guy” in a real moment of levity. It’s easy to get distracted if you’re a less experienced performer, or even for those with some time under their belt performing a new play for the second time in front of an audience, but Gin didn’t miss a beat.
Gin Hammond’s new play Living IncogNegro, premiering at Key City Public Theatre, asks the question “What do you do when your physical identity is different from your cultural identity?”. What follows is a wonderfully constructed thesis that examines life as a veritable Venn diagram in a society that treats people differently depending on how they look versus what their cultural background is. Gin Hammond pulls on her own life experiences not to provide answers, but rather to give perspective on her experiences and to let the audience absorb this piece and take an introspective look at themselves in the context of culture, heritage, and race in American society.
The premiere of Gin Hammond’s Living IncogNegro runs on stage at Key City Public Theatre for two weekends only, through February 11. For more information, including ticket availability and purchase, visit https://keycitypublictheatre.org/.
