Up From Slavery

Charles Dumas is outstanding as Booker T. Washington in this one-man play based on Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery. Taking place at the turn of the century, the play is set at Tuskegee Institute (the school that Washington ran until his death in 1915) in Alabama. It opens with Washington holding a press conference. Over the course of the proceedings, he describes his emancipation from slavery, his burning desire to learn and subsequent enrollment in the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia (where he defrayed his board and tuition by working as a janitor), his later appointment as the first president of Tuskegee. Dumas' presentation is a masterful mixture of stereotypical shuffling and smiling (Washington before his mostly white audience) and a deeper underlying sense of betrayal. W. E. B. DuBois, a black intellectual in the audience who in reality was appalled by and outspoken about Washington's commitment to industrial (but not liberal arts) training for blacks, asks at one point: "Do you ask that we give up our civil rights?" And throughout the play, one outraged questioner keeps asking about a recent spate of lynchings--a subject that Washington does not want to address. In the powerhouse finale, Washington's polite veneer breaks down, and Dumas delivers a searing performance of a man torn between his "wish" for things to be all right, and his knowledge that they are not. Highly recommended. (Available from: Chip Taylor Communications, 15 Spollett Drive, Derry, NH 03038; (800) 876-CHIP.)