a hip hop and spoken word drama that definitely pulls joy out of tragedy
When someone is murdered, the news story is cold. Definite. It presents the facts, and sometimes those facts have the weight of systemic injustice festering within them. Such was the case with the shooting of Tyisha Miller on the 28th July 1998, an African-American woman killed whilst unconscious in a car by four police officers, shot twelve times.
However, these facts aren’t able to convey the full vitality of a young life, and that is what ‘Dreamscape’ does, a play written by Rickerby Hinds, directed by Hinds and Mxolisi Masilela. In the play, the young woman is Myeisha Mills, superbly played by Kim Blanche Adonis. The story is told through the mediums of beatboxing, spoken word, rap and hip hop dance; Adonis shows immense skill in each, with the story flowing through each expressive form.
We are told the police find her in the car after relatives call for an ambulance, with a gun on her lap and clear signs she is undergoing a potentially fatal drug overdose whilst unconscious. Kgwadi Tshwarelo Selolo doubles as a police officer peering into the car and the coroner reading out the autopsy in precise and detached detail. Each bullet hole is specified, beatboxing mimicking the sound of the bullet entering.
Yet from within this spoken dismembering of her body into anatomical parts a story is defiantly pulled. Though the real spectre of racism within the US police is hovering in the background, Myeisha’s dreamlike, alive-ghost of a narration centres her own life and celebrates it. The coroner narrates the bullet hole in the skull and Myeisha muses on hair styling; the bullet hole through her chest triggers her to remember the development of her sexuality, her growing awareness of it within her body.
Adonis is a beautiful dancer, fluid and joyful in her movements, and the characters’ sheer reveling in the expressive potential of her body is paradoxically one of the most tragic parts of this portrayal of a life denied. She is also funny, warmly sharing small moments of humour and excitement with us. There is a sense throughout of a life on the brink; that there is so much to come in womanhood, having just left adolescence behind.
At times the story felt slightly hingeless – a ghost come back with fervent aliveness to share her story, snapshots and vignettes found in each bullet wound. There was a sense of wanting more from the script – more of the rootedness of this life, an engagement with the people around Myeisha who shared her life with her. Nonetheless, Adonis’ vivacity and emotional range imbued the story both with the inherent grief of a life cut short whilst inhabiting the joyful aliveness of each story and memory.
Dreamscape is at the Arcola Theatre until the 8th August. Tickets linked here: https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/dreamscape/