Saturday, February 07, 2004

By Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

One pleasure of theater is to learn something. That's the goal of Vernell Lillie's new historical pageant, "Buffalo Soldiers Plus One," directed by her with accompanying music by Ernest McCarty, staged appropriately during Black History Month by Pitt's Kuntu Repertory Theatre.

Kuntu's Buffalo Soldiers include, front left, Marcia Jones as a woman who concealed her identity to serve with the cavalry. Click photo for larger image.

It is important to know that heroic African-American units served in the Civil War and continuously thereafter until the armed services were finally integrated by President Truman (only after Jackie Robinson integrated baseball). This exemplary service included the Indian Wars of the 1880s, the period of Lillie's play, when the black troops were popularly referred to as buffalo soldiers.

Surely this is generally known, especially from recent films. Lillie concentrates more specifically on the irony of those 1880s wars: Wasn't white contempt of American Indians the same sort of racism blacks experienced? Should black soldiers, only recently freed, help the government exterminate Indians so predominantly white settlers could take their land?

There is potential for a strong drama about the internal conflicts buffalo soldiers experienced. But Lillie's play doesn't so much dramatize conflicts as lecture about them. "Buffalo Soldiers" rarely digests its research into living dialogue -- its characters make speeches that sound more like newspaper editorials than actual dialogue.

The story itself is confusing, a series of confrontations among the buffalo soldiers (with their two sympathetic white colonels), a bigoted white general and the Indians. Narrators sometimes fill in previous or later events. I just couldn't follow the time schedule or geography of battles and other events.

But that's not Lillie's main concern. Rather, she wants to educate us about the ironies. You get a clue early on when a soldier says, "Native Americans have been playing their drums all day." (Isn't "Native American" a 20th-century locution?) Anyway, hardly a negative thing is said about the Indians by the men fighting them; a Seminole scout lectures a general on the admirable qualities of the buffalo soldiers; and the Indians lecture us all on non-ownership of the land -- all sympathetic views but more obviously the playwrights' views than the characters'.

The chief Apache leader, Victorio, even links blacks, Indians and "our friends in Mexico" into an anachronistic rainbow coalition. I'm sure some of this is based on research. But a colonel yelling "shut up" at a general?

	"Buffalo Soldiers Plus One" Where: Kuntu Repertory Theatre at Alumni Hall (old Masonic Temple), 4227 Fifth Ave., Oakland. When: Through Feb. 14; Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun. 4 p.m.; Feb. 12, 11 a.m. Tickets: $12-$20; discounts; 412-624-7298.

What's more successful about "Buffalo Soldiers" is the sense of life among the black troops, especially during a pair of Sunday services at the start of Act 2. Here, as elsewhere, there is pleasure in the music provided by McCarty. "Buffalo Soldiers" isn't exactly a musical, but music gives it much of its heart, even in such a small touch as when, after a bigoted tirade by the general, the black soldiers whistle "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," like the Sharks responding to the bigoted cops in "West Side Story."

The large company of 31 is mainly students and community actors, not the stronger group Kuntu sometimes uses. Demetrius Gross and Corey Rieger are fine as Capt. Carpenter and Col. Grierson. Marcia Jones plays "William Cathay," an historically paccurate woman disguised as a man.

Some of the staging feels haphazard, like battles where no one fires a shot and white officers stand around without lifting a finger as Indians politely leave them be. There are a lot of unintended pauses.

But even at just 95 minutes, it's a huge undertaking, and in the post-show talk-back that is an essential Kuntu feature, Lillie described some of the adversity the play faced. Spotlight Costumes came to the rescue and Young Ruel Davis stepped in to do the choreography (and some fine dancing himself).

Lillie also points out that there is a black aesthetic that is purposefully non-linear, eschewing beginning-middle-end dramaturgy for pageant and ritual. Agreed.

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