The horrific history of slavery in the USA is laid bare in American Saga, Rogue Machine’s last production at the Met Theater (the company will move to the Electric Lodge in Venice this fall). Set in a North Carolina graveyard (simple but effective set by Priti Donde), the play brings to poetic life the stories of three of the black folks buried there, circa 1850-1860. Author Dionna Michelle Daniel has those folks speaking to us (and each other) as if they were still alive, using language that is rich and powerful in expression and feeling. Daniel’s work is more of a choral piece than a proper play, a cry from the heart of an oppressed but proud and undefeated people. The first character we meet is a High Priestess (Sha’Leah Nikole Stubblefield), who sits imperiously in the center of the graveyard, wearing a spectacular red gown. She is a deity of the Yoruba tribe, the favorite target of African slavers in the 18th and 19th centuries. She has no dialogue, just breaks into song every once in a while, mixing Yoruba and Christian spirituals in an eerily haunting voice. Her words are aimed at the other characters in American Saga, Betty (Mildred Langford), Alvis (Derek Jackson) and George (Jon Chaffin), the three slaves who represent different sides of the people brought in chains to North Carolina and exploited and brutalized by their white masters. In Daniel’s hereafter, Betty, Alvis and George move between past and present as they re-enact their histories in the pre-Civil War south, bare their souls. Their language also goes back and forth in time, one minute sounding archaic, the next blisteringly and profanely modern. The mixture shocks at times but never seems wrong, thanks to Daniels’s masterful control of her material—and to the remarkable work by the cast. They dig deep into the souls of their characters, finding the moments of love and laughter that briefly lit up their lives, reliving the traumas that ultimately overwhelmed and crushed them. Only the militant George was able, spiritually, to keep resisting oppression right up into the 21st century. Directed with admirable skill by Desean Kevin Terry (who recently won a local theater award for his acting work in last year’s Les Blancs), American Saga also benefits from the evocative musical score played by a silhouetted trio (bass, banjo and violin) and an off-stage African drummer.
