East Texas Hot Links
The play puts American racism under a microscope by taking us into the lives of eight people in a “colored only” bar. Struggling for survival in Klan country raises questions they answer with the trial and error of their lives. XL Dancer, played with fierce intensity by Michael Williams, looks out for himself alone, remaining loyal to the white employer who baits him with dreams of becoming a supervisor. Many of the black men’s bosses are also Klan members, currently suspected in the disappearance of several young black men. When XL puts loyalty to his boss above protecting a younger black community member, the audience comes face-to-face with some troubling questions: Is this man morally wrong for looking out for his own survival? When men are treated like animals, can there be a higher morality? The irony of East Texas Hot Links is that no matter what choices these men make, no matter what morals they live by, an unpredictable force surrounds them that will kill them with as little sorrow as a farmer shooting vermin off his fields. How does a man live justly when justice is constantly denied him?
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Because Lee’s characters resonate as archetypes–the bride/mother, the suitor, the poet, the kind father, the angry young man–it would have been easy to play them as stereotypes; but no one here is in any danger of that. Freeman Coffey has the challenging role of Buckshot, a man feared for his brute strength. But Coffey takes us into the frustration that fuels Buckshot’s short temper; his joyous, sensual dance with Charlsetta makes us feel his humanity. Likewise Greg Holliman as the regal, mystical Boochie Reed makes his character specific and real, giving him the powerful presence of a man who can truly feel the darkness and light of matters beyond the everyday. Craig Boyd rounds out the cast with his impressionable Delmus Green–the sacrificial figure, the man so pure and innocent he’s unaware of the dangerous traps white culture has set for him.
