Pipeline Revisited

 For Pipeline I would attempt to take an Afro-Surrealist to the play, blending reality and the fantastical to convey the true nature of systemic racism. Afro-Surrealism is a medium through which filmmakers and other visual performers attempt to portray their reality in a systemically racist society. James Baldwin said "what happens […] when a reality finds itself on a collision course with a fantasy? For the white people of this country have become, for the most part, sleepwalkers.” The very nature of pipeline, and in fact the very nature of being a BIPOC in America is to be a victim to a surreal structure of oppression. I would portray this in the pipeline by highlighting the surreal, fantastical, and disturbing elements of the school to prison pipeline, creating a show that seeks to convey its message more so through set design and visual cues throughout the scene than the dialogue. Concerning Set design, I would focus on creating a disjointed, prison-esque stage. Prison bars would line the windows and protrude awkwardly from the walls like concrete rebar. They would twist up and down like vines, entrapping the actors and the audience as well. The seats would be uncomfortable, small, hard, and cold, in fact, many might rather stand. The walls would be gray and lonely, the only splashes of color being the bloodstains left from fights of days past. No one cleans them up, even as the blood is dripping across the floor or down the walls, even if people are tracking it around with their shoes, no one even mentions it like it's there. The lighting would be used to signify the perspective the audience is experiencing the show through, with different colors symbolizing different characters. Bright white spotlights would be used to focus on the characters, and the rest of the stage was often left in darkness with just enough wash lights to see what was happening. A West African mask would be up on a wall in every scene. During scenes where the poem in the show is being recited, as well as the scene where the son shoves the teacher, which would be portrayed in my version, the son is wearing the mask. Taking it off the wall, the lights turn red and blood drips down from above, a physical dance begins, interpreting the poem through movement. I would hope for the movement to be reminiscent of the evil versions of the characters in Jordan Peele's film, "Us". In terms of costuming, I would want characters to be wearing normal everyday clothes but torn and bloodied as if everyone casually walked through a mob or riot on their way to school that day. The only character's not dressed like this would be the son and his girlfriend at the school, who instead would wear all white toga-looking robes. Fancy and ornate, they would perform their scene while transferring between different Greek statue poses, running to new spots on the stage, posing, and continuing their lines, then after some time doing it again. They either do not talk when they are moving and only when they are frozen, or they do not talk when they are frozen and only when they are moving, I haven't decided yet. The sound design would take cues from soundscapes, utilizing the everyday noises of a school and turning them into a droning, eerie song. Distorted and synthesized they would feel like the autotune ramblings of Kanye West on his song "Runaway". The show would end with its most interpretive and detached scene yet. As the son recites his ten rules, the world is slowly turning upside down, the actors, suspended in the air, would circle each other while flipping, almost like astronauts in zero gravity, the prison bars at this point subtly replaced with actual vines. The set has transformed into a lush fantasy forest, the walls broken through by the earth. Hands with unseen bodies tear away at the walls to reveal this forest. It is a beautiful grove, and the son, wearing the African mask, is at the center of it all, twisting and chanting in tongues while his mother floats above him, chanting a repeated part of the poem from the show. "we die soon, we die soon, we die soon" in their efforts to outrun this "social prophecy" and this never-ending cycle, they have driven themselves to madness. Safe only in the gardens of their minds, there is no escape from this terrible fate, yet there is a silver lining. They aren't alone in this fate, family is the tie that cannot be broken, and whether it drives them to death or insanity, they will never stop searching for a way out. The show ends as though they never stop, and I believe this bleak, never-ending torment is an accurate reflection of the real-life feelings of being victimized by these systems, as well as the two sides of the same coin children in the school to prison pipeline face. Imprisonment either in reality or in their minds, but either way the conclusion is the same.