'.
By TUREKA TURK
Michl,., CltJan
The year is in the early
1970s. The time is of evolution,
revolution, love and the
"wherefuckwegoing" tribe.
Sekou Sundiata's play "The
Circle Unbroken Is A Hard
Bop" is an innovative, hit­
home piece that unfolds the
story of Stephanie, If-exiled
from America in the early
1970s after finding out her
lover was a COINTELPRO
agent. Through a series of re­
vealing epic-letters to friend
Sekou, the turbulent times of
young Black. Power are born
all over again.
Trave ityt allover the world,
dancing, Stephani eneoun­
tare peopl and places that
draw her closer to home.
''They ask me what I am",
she says. "I say, 'I am African­
American. They say, 'Where is
this Africa-America?"
It is dialogue like this that
validates the fact that
Sundiata's play is .long over­
due. Sundiata brings the real­
ity of government intervention
in the surge of'Black f?nergy in
the late 60s and early 70s by
having Stephanie face a once
bright, intelligent brother,
now strung out on' govern­
ment-induced drugs.
SUNDIATA PORTRAYS
the dark, disturbed' brother,
who speaks, through an ocean
of compelling, jumbled rheto-.
ric, a few lines of emotionally
charged revelations about the
"movement". "Malcolm," he
jumbles, "our Black prince.
Nobody else got hit, nobody
from the By Any Means Nec­
essary Crew ... Those who
didn't go to jail, the grave or
law school are in the den, sell­
ingreefer, waiting for the fever
to go disco ... We were nuts from
. the getgo."
''What happens," Stephanie
asks after seeing the brother
"when you know too much?
You see too clearly? What hap­
pens when you know you can
change the world?"
"The Broken Circle Is A
Hard Bop" is a journey, good
and bad, down the characters'
lives of yesterday. Craig, the
musician friend of Stephanie,
is a pure burst of exciting en­
ergy to Sekou's slowly dis­
pensed emotion and
Stephanie's slow-coming rec-
all oms. 115 of th dual-
i m of "broth "bac then,
discussing the philosophies of '
the revolution, in the midst of
a party filled with incense, sis­
ters that didn't play, and the
white woman who turned it all
upside down.
"She was a white white
women," Craig with a mischie­
vous grin, "with blond hair and
a black skirt up to here."
Brothers dropped their con­
versation and sisters went on
"ho" alert, Craig laughs.
UNDIATA' PIECE
does not glorify the experience
that many members of the
young generation wish that
could have took part in. Nor
does it down play the "move­
ment" as silly idea of some
young, naive fools. It does,
howeyer, recreate the spirit of
the "wherefuckwegoing" tribe,
the loving label Sundiata at­
taches to the brothers and sis­
ters of that generation who
didn't know where they were
going, but didn't like where
they had been.
A powerful and inspiring
drama about the legend of M­
riean Americans, "The Circle
Unbroken Is A Hard Bop"
should be the formula that we
wean our children on, instead
of just memorizing the "I Have
A Dream" speech every Febru­
ary. It is a trip to the personal
side of the people many of us
only saw in pictures, clad in
berets, black uniforms, and
guns.
The cast, consisting of
Stephanie Alston, Craig Har­
ris, and Sekou Sundiata, is im­
mense. Alston is Stephanie
just H Cral and
undiata . kou, In that e
chara h truly mad
their presence within th
fine actors. Each of their other
talen ts, Alston's danci ng,
Sundiata's writing, and Har­
ris's music, are essential addi­
tions to the plot.
"The Circle Unbroken Is A
Hard Bop" was prcxluced by
Miguel Algarin, founder of the
Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a beau­
ti llittlediveofa theater that
has been existence since 1974.
The Cafe most recently held
Amiri Baraka's recent play,
"Meeting Lillie." Resident Di­
rector at Nuyorican Poets
Cafe, Rome Neal, deserves
mad props for his work with
"The Circle Broken Is A Hard
Bop." Sundiata's piece runs
every Thursday, Friday and
Saturday through October 16
at the N uyorican Poets Cafe,
236 East 3rd Street in New
York.
"May 'the spirits,"
Stephanie writes Sekou,
"watch our asses."
By Brent Staple
gangster rap is that wildly successful
music in which all women are "bitche"
and "who " and young men kill each
other for sport. It's hard-core, and bris­
tl with guns. Hear a band called
m
celeb
d
.
mlO n
Onyx, recently number on on th
charts, urging its listen to "Thro
ya gunz in the air/And pop-pop lik ya
just don't care." Hear the rap r call
Dr. Ore: "Rat, tat, tat, tat e r h i­
tate to put nigger on his back."
Hear th B tnuts, in n od to th
machine pistol;·It . n't nothing you
should laugh toll'll hoot your mo if
I ha to. " e lyrics go out to an
The most dangerous myth facing Af­
rican Americans today is that middle­
class life is count rfeit and that only
poverty and suffering, and the rage
that attends them, are real.
Anyone who doubts the power of this
myth need only think back to the
.Clarsnce Thomas confirmation hear­
ings, and bow Judge Thomas's us
as "a sharecrop r' gr ndson" w put
forth as a qualifi tion for th Suprem
Court ..
The poverty i h is a dan rous;
anyone who doubts this might 11
Edmund Perry, th Black Ex t r
graduate who w shot to d ath by.a
undercover cop in Morningsid
Heights. At E eter, Edmund had
played t swaggering tough with .
At home, in th st of ew York,
the role reared up nd killed him.
Tom Wolti' y "Radical Chic,"
publish in 1970, is still th t win­
dow into th notion t t a magical no­
bility is somehow conf .r d on th
dis . The y lampoo t
party thrown by th conductor Leonard
Bernstein for a group of Black Pan­
ther at which the Panthers were
(awned over by New York's elite.
IT W THERE, Mr. Wolfi wrote,
that "a Park Avenue matron first ar­
ticulated the great recurrent motion
of Radical Chic: 'Th are no civil
right Negroe wearing gray uits
three siz too big - th are real
men" The central ten t of radical chic
is that urban primitivism is' romantic
and that middle-cl is passe.
A generation has passed since Par
Avenu swooned for the Panth rs, The
BI ck middle cl i larger than ever,
but-its influen is much diminished in
the inn r city. The ghetto, once
p lata) mix of th middle class, the
midly poor and th very poor, is now
made up of the very poor alone. Ado­
I nt murder and pregnancy are en­
demic; more Black m n go to jail than
to colI
For th ho haven't caught up,
ing
r. from,
e wh n �- R -printed {rom the New York
origins: "Th: e. Time
