On Fire!!

(Photo credit to Linda Johnson)

I’ve got to say…I really like plays based in history.  It’s amazing what we can take from things that actually happened and turn them into entertainment.  Fire!! was an absolutely amazing play taken right from history…it made me want to learn more about that time in history.  I definitely looked up a lot about the historical roots after it.  I can’t say I know a ton about the Harlem Renaissance, but I know a good amount about a lot of the writers involved.  Going in to seeing Fire!!, I knew to expect a lot of fun, creativity, and an entertaining show.

Quintessence is a beautiful theater, and they used that to their advantage with Fire!!.  The play started out in the lobby, with the audience gathered around the perimeter and the actors in the center.  We got an introduction to the play, and it was a fun one.  At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what was coming next, but we were then ushered into the theatre.  It looked completely different from the theatre we were at last season, and it was stunning.  It wasn’t anything too fancy, but it was really beautiful.  The large cutout figures that framed the stage were super cool.  The stage was simple, and there was a dressing room set up behind the main stage.  I really loved it.

The idea behind the play was simple enough.  The writers of Fire!!, are a collection of “Younger Negro Artists”  They need to raise money for the print of their lit magazine, so they’re performing some of the pieces of writing.  We got to see six pieces on stage…“Color Struck”, “Wedding Day”, “Cordelia the Crude”, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade”, “Sweat”, and “Intelligencia”.  Each piece was extremely unique, and staged absolutely fabulously.  We got to see the writers of each piece, as well as seeing it staged.

It’s extremely interesting seeing these people.  It’s amazing seeing historical figures like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston as young people.  This was a start for a lot of these famous writers.  The Harlem Renaissance was coming out of a lot of darkness for Black people.  They were finally getting a voice, though I’m not saying things were easy by any means.  Fire!! addresses a lot of the big things these people were dealing with.  From “Color Struck”’s story of dark skinned versus light skinned African Americans to “Wedding Day”’s story of a white woman leaving her Black fiancé, we really saw the struggles that these people went through.

Fire!! didn’t just address Black people, though.  We saw a lot of marginalized groups in this show, such as women and queer people.  I really loved that we saw a lot of strong Black women in a time when all women were subjugated.  Zora Neale Hurston is one of my favorite authors, and we got to see some really intense work from her.  In “Sweat”, we see an abused woman finally take control of her life.  I really loved the queer representation.  “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” talked about issues that are controversial even now, including being queer and loving all types of people.

This wasn’t all that Fire!! gave us.  I definitely loved all of the historical aspects and knowing that we were experiencing real historical figures, but there was so much more down to the very roots.  The actors were absolutely fantastic.  They all completely blew me away.  At the very root of it all, they were playing real people.  The way the embodied these real people was jaw dropping.  But there was so much more to Fire!!.  There was the way they played the characters in the stories.  Seeing all the actors play very different characters was super cool.  They all did a phenomenal job on taking on very different roles, and I most definitely believed everything they did from character to character.  Each story was so believable because of all of this.

Another aspect about the cast that blew me away was how well they worked together.  I know that ensemble pieces can be hard, especially when you’re playing multiple characters.  But this group was so good together.  It was clear that they really loved working with each other, cared about each other, and that they trusted each other completely.  I’ve done a lot of ensemble work, and I know that can be really hard.  When you’re with a small group of people all the time, sometimes you just want to scream.  But the end result always shows the true nature of these things.

I walked away from Fire!! with a new understanding of some things in life.  It really made me think about things that I’m not sure I would have ever really discovered otherwise.  This isn’t really a time in history I know much about, but Fire!! really opened my eyes to it.  I love that someone really thought to base a historic play in the Harlem Renaissance, with writers that so many of us think we know, but there’s so much more going on with them and their lives.  Everything about this play stunned me, and I feel like it really changed me.  I’m so grateful this is a show that’s happening.  It deserves absolutely everything.