The multimedia extravaganza Peace Piece/ Take A Walk in My Shoes premiered last night at USF, and it was a kick. I'd spoken with two of its creators, Marisa Alma Nick and Tera "DJ Nova Jade" Greene, during a recent episode of ArtsSpeak and was impressed by their enthusiasm and ambition (40-plus performers, a documentary, national tours!). But I'd also worried a bit that its broad goals (fostering world peace, fighting for arts education) might yield a production that was just a little too earnest, a little too after-school special.
Nah. The show wasn't perfect — it started a half hour late, there were some technical glitches, some of the text was more one-dimensionally hectoring than it needed to be — but there was also real visual imagination in evidence, too, and a fizzy, insouciant sense of playfulness that was, simply, a lot of fun.
Progressing through a series of danced and scripted vignettes, the action centers on a Mailman (Phillip Gulley), who seems to be both a conduit of prejudice and a harbinger of death, and on two sisters named Empathy (Nick) and Plane Jane (Carla Marie Rivera), who are torn apart. You can probably predict the message just from the names: When we lose the power of Empathy, civilization is in danger of self-destructing.
But on the way to that rather obvious point (made in a brothel-ish nightmare involving lots of red and black and dominatrix gear), there are some delightful moments. Some I loved:
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2009.