VITAL SIGNS
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A kinetic flow of energy can become its own message: a play’s words can be less important than the power an actor puts behind them. In Vital Signs no single ingredient–the poetic script by William S. Carroll, solo performance by Carl Barnett, or percussion, vocal, and guitar score by George Blaise–seems destined for glory. But as staged by Hrukhti Men Ab for the Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre, the three elements fuse into a power-packed piece of anguished art, a 75-minute stream-of-consciousness confessional by a young black man.
Taking us on what he calls a “trip through a self-contained universe,” the Narrator describes his too-short life from the jail cell where he died under police torture. Carroll’s narrative focuses on the man’s resonant if familiar memories–getting the wrong shoes for school, fights at recess, amateur bouts at a gym, working a paper route with precision, rage when a boss calls him “nigger,” a teenage infatuation that sends him into rhapsodies over a radiant future.
