“Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” is entertaining as hell and hard to watch. It captures the ongoing pain of our inability to deal with racism that’s just as searingly palpable now as in was then. Does the watchcry, “No Justice, No Peace” ring a bell?
Jobsite—which originally ran the production on four dates in November and December—has done Anna Deavere Smith’s riveting script justice in this live capture from last fall’s production in the Jaeb at the Straz Center. Actually, there’s a benefit that this multi-camera shoot affords. We’re able to view the 27 characters portrayed by the versatile Andresia Moseley pouring out their souls in closeup. Smith interviewed 300 people on all sides of the riots that followed the controversial Rodney King verdict to create “verbatim theatre.” The words all come directly from recordings that she edited and sequenced to tell a multi-faceted story revealing the diversity and tension of a city in turmoil.
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
Jobsite Theatre “Live Capture”
Tickets: $14.99
strazhome.uscreen.io
Streaming March 3-9 only
It’s hard for me to realize as a baby boomer, that the story of these riots is unfamiliar to much of the potential audience. Rodney King was shown on national television being clubbed by four police officers who were eventually cleared of any guilt. This was quickly followed by a 15-year-old Black girl shot dead by a Korean shop owner who escaped with only a $500 fine. These two events prompted a week of riots where over 50 people were killed. Jobsite Director David M. Jenkins makes sure that we never lose the narrative thread where L.A.’s somewhat uncomfortable pluralism is edited into a coherent whole.
Smith’s storytelling ruthlessly probes the different classes, professions, genders, and races, all of whom are smartly identified on screen, as Jenkins’ hip-hop score bursts forth. The stage lights dim and set designer Brian Smallheer’s upstage flats are struck with slashes of light by Jo Averill-Snell that capture the jolt of an electrical arc, which is an apt metaphor for the explosive emotional environment surrounding the events. “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” lays bare the devastating human, political, and economic toll on this most multicultural of cities.
The range of characters is kaleidoscopic—a disabled Korean man, LAPD chief Daryl Gates, a white male Hollywood talent agent, beaten truck driver Reginald Denny, a Panamanian immigrant mother, actor Charlton Heston, a teenage Black gang member, opera star Jesse Norman, a macho Mexican-American artist, Rodney King’s chain-smoking aunt, and Rep. Maxine Waters; you get the idea.
It’s a high-octane series of performances, even if Moseley portrays characters whereas Smith was a unique mimic. Interspersed with the monologues, Jenkins intercuts video of baton-wielding police, surveillance footage of the Korean store owner killing the Black girl, and an unruly mob pulling a white truck driver from his cab as a news helicopter hovers above. All three, of course, invoke a visceral response.
Musical aficionados know that “South Pacific” admonished in 1949 that “you’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,” but what pops in my head is “Pippin”: Everything has its season/Everything has its time/Show me a reason and I'll soon show you a rhyme.” In the monologues, there’s plenty of blame to spread around “The Mexicans were looting, not the Blacks.” A police officer laments the ban on upper body control holds and excuses the baton strikes as poor technique, so we’ve “got to find some options.” It’s always someone else’s fault. “If it doesn't come up in court, it shouldn’t come up at the breakfast table.” Then there’s an amazing bit comparing the psychology of a jury to that of an AA meeting. “Why should we be spending so much time on a guy like that?” And what prompts some to help a stranger while others look away?
Smith shows people struggling to make coherent sense of their rage and pain, but she knows what’s funny, ironic or even grotesque about her characters. Moseley gets to strut her stuff helped immensely by Katrina Stevenson’s costumes, which build upon a simple sleeveless black blouse and pants. Along with a few well chosen props, the costume pieces act as signifiers that complete the character—a combo of glasses, cigarettes, hats, scarves, blazers, a vest and a kente cloth. Moseley masters a plethora of cadences and accents: Valley girl, Spanish and Korean, with multiple registers, stutters, rhythms and silent moments when language fails.
This is 1992, but it could just as easily be the L.A. Watts riots from 1965, or torn from the headlines following George Floyd’s murder. The cultural complexity, social inequality and explosive anger of the time mirror events which launched the BLM protests. It reminds me of reading “A Little History of the World” by E. H. Gombrich recommended by journalist Fareed Zakaria. It’s a quick read aimed at his grandkids, synthesizing and reducing all of world history into a few hundred pages. It’s so reductionist that Shakespeare doesn’t make the cut, and the American Revolution is one sentence. What you come away with is that all we do is fight and conquer. Our entire history is fear of the other. As I write, the hearings on Capitol Hill are discussing the insurrection on January 6. How do you fix a culture when we beat police officers with blue lives matter flags? Why are we as a people, who are more alike than we are different, so angry about our differences?
At its core, “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” asks more questions than it has answers. It leaves us in the limbo of twilight. Can we as an audience rise to the occasion to model anti-racism in our own lives? Is it naive to think that in another 20-plus years, the cries of “no justice, no peace” can truly be an historical footnote? Watch this with your friends and children and answer the call to action.
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This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2021.