Colored Waiting Room
Colored Waiting Room
By Jessica Taylor
Blue Venue
Orlando International Theater Fringe Festival, Orlando, FL</strong>
While a black woman in blackface does have a certain ironic appeal, it’s not enough to suspend the distaste we’ve all been cultivated to display to overt racism. Jessica Taylor’s one woman show challenges the audience with a frank re-quoting of the traditional American racial stereotypes, from Uncle Tom’s cabin to the Color Purple. A rag doll representing Lady Liberty sits in the audience with a zippered mouth and a burning desire to avoid the direct challenge of Taylor’s monologue. The symbolism is blunt – we purposefully avoid recognizing the error of our ways, but there’s neither a clear call to change our ways or enough parody of the problem to embarrass it to death. It’s half of the song, a call without a response, and while occasional splatters of laughter creep from the nervous audience, we walk on ground tread heavily in the past. Lady Liberty is lynched for her indolence, but that seems to solve nothing. In the Colored Waiting Room, all we find is the baggage of our past, dusty and embarrassing, and the realization we are doomed to lug it around for generations.
This show is presented as part of the 17th Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival. Information on times, tickets, and venue location my be found at http://orlandofringe.org/