MBJ at Berkeley Rep

I was so glad to get to see Marc Bamuthi Joseph perform in this setting (at Berkeley Rep), especially after seeing him perform excerpts of the same show for Works in Progress. Amazingly, both performances felt like an intimate experience--even though one was in the company of two or three dozen people (most of whom I knew) in a well-lit room in which Marc could easily move through the audience, and the other was in the company of hundreds (most of whom I didn't know) sitting in tiered darkness while Marc performed on a distant, lit stage. Comparing these two experiences made it clear that Marc is the kind of performer who can make his audience feel comfortable, and draw them in, despite the size of the venue.

Of course, the audience also plays a big part in making the performer feel comfortable. As Youth Speaks brings conscious performers to many different parts of the country, the performers don't always know what kind of reception they're going to get from their audience. Marc repeatedly announced, in intervals, how enlivening it was to perform before an engaged, familiar Berkeley audience--something that probably added to his comfort, and, added to my experience of feeling personally engaged in his performance.

It was also very powerful to see his pieces enhanced by lighting and amplified sound, and to experience the accompaniment by the MC. I was amazed by Marc's performance at Mills, fulling using his body and his own vocal capacity, but I hadn't experienced the poems/narratives fully until I was able to see and hear the full affect onstage.

Marc's work demonstrated how poetry and performance can work hand-in-hand with memoir and journalism. We had characters, we had stories from youth (interviewing Jay-Z was a personal favorite), we had travelogue. I loved the pieces because they were so intensely personal, but always with a political message or consideration behind the sizzling lyrical language and movement.