Objectively/Reasonable: A Community Response to the Shooting of Tamir Rice, the electrifying production that examined one of the most controversial police killings in the country, is once again set to take center stage at Creative Space at Waterloo Arts on February 17 and will run through March 11. The critically acclaimed play responded to the killing of Tamir Rice with as much force, intensity and brutality as the actual shooting that inspired the production.
As I wrote when the play debuted last fall, this work is raw; it serves it up straight, no chaser; it takes no prisoners; minces no words; spares no feelings … exactly like what Timothy Loehmann served up when he executed a 12-year-old boy who had been playing with a replica gun in a city park.
Everyone who missed this play the first time around should make a real effort to get off their lazy asses and go see it this time, and for a very good reason: The arts — music, dance, painting and theater — changes culture in ways that demonstrations can’t. Art frames issues in ways that the powerbrokers of society (those who can make systemic changes to the system) can grasp. Art provokes empathy and arouses the collective conscience of a community.
But for this play to be seen by a larger audience it needs you — yes, I mean you! — to do more than just spend your time surfing Facebook and making bold and angry comments about things you’re upset about. No, it needs you to walk up and buy a ticket so the lights in the theater can be kept on, so that the staff can at least be paid some minimal amount.
The reason this truth-telling play is being brought back is because the battle is not yet won; the struggle continues. So, if demonstrating isn’t your cup of tea, here is another way you can show your support for bringing about change.
And really, if you don’t go out to see this fine production, you probably just need to shut the hell up. Quit complaining about police brutality ‘cause you ain’t gonna do shit.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com
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