Playhouse Tuesdays: Topdog/Underdog

by erica wachs, prose reader

Hello everybody! I am so sorry you haven’t heard from me in a month. I have been consumed by horrible, awful midterms that pretty much prevented me from even thinking about doing something other than studying for the past four weeks. So I apologize profusely. But… I’m back!

Since I didn’t get to do a full blog post for February, I missed my opportunity to dedicate a blog post to Black History Month, which I wanted to do (again, stupid freaking midterms). So I’m going to talk about a show that I feel very deeply should be read by everyone and anyone, despite their race, religion, background, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It’s brilliant. It’s dark, and it’s heavy, but it’s brilliant. I am putting my disclaimer up here (in case you didn’t know) that I am neither black nor male, so I will try my best not to say any of the politically incorrect things that would get me fired from this blogging position. I’m truly writing from my heart, and am simply speaking about how this play spoke to me in the context of Black History Month. However, if I have offended anyone, either due to my ignorance, or phrasing or anything, I am truly, deeply sorry. I just wanted to get that out there.

But back to the play… This show is a playwright blogger’s dream to speak about, as it does what plays, especially plays written by minorities should do: it makes us stop, it immerses us into a world so alien to our own, it makes that world familiar, and then it makes us think.

Topdog/Underdog is written by Suzan-Lori Parks and won the Pulitzer in 2002. It tells the story of two black brothers, Booth and Lincoln (their father had a sick sense of humor). Lincoln, the older of the two brothers, has gotten out of the three-card monte business and has taken a job playing Lincoln at an arcade. Every day, he dresses up as the president, applies white face, and sits in a fake theater, waiting for a guest to fake shoot him, where he pretends to die. His younger brother Booth spends the play attempting to fix his relationship with his sort-of girlfriend Grace, and to perfect the art of three-card monte.

There are three things that stand out to me about this play. The first is the idea of Lincoln’s mentality. Here you have a black man, named after President Lincoln, who has to apply white face and die multiple times every single day. If that image alone doesn’t provide enough of a commentary on our society, doesn’t make your skin jump with a mixture of anticipation of something better and absolute disgust, then I don’t know what image would do the trick for you. Every time Lincoln appears in his costume, he inhabits layers of the history we share as a nation, and the history he shares with his family, and especially his brother. In this way, Parks is able to take a large topic, like race, and shrink it to a powerful microcosm: we all have families. We all have names. We all mean something.

The second thing that stands out to me about this show is the act of three-card monte. For those who don’t know, the game is one you’re apt to see on a Boardwalk, where there are three cards, with one being different from the other two. The person who controls the game will shuffle the cards. If, after the shuffling, you pick the different card, you win the game. If not, you lose. Lincoln is supposedly a master at the trick, and has swindled millions of dollars away from vulnerable takers throughout the years, while Booth struggles throughout the show, awkwardly stuttering his way through the language. The monologue each has when they “perform” their trick becomes a mantra throughout the show, which almost hypnotizes the audience. But there’s one subtle difference that I think is profound: whenever Booth imitates the game, the black cards are the losers while the red card is the winner. However, whenever Lincoln takes over, the red cards are the losers, and the black card is the winner. In a world where Lincoln has never won anything, in a world where everything is out of his control is finally a place where he can win: he can control the game, his posse, and the people he plays against. Three-card monte is his world, and in his world, the black card—the black man—is finally the winner.

Finally, you (hopefully, probably) know me a bit by know, and therefore know that, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, I love plays that are simply conversation. Sure, there are outside forces that drive along the “plot,” but the show is a series of conversations that pick up where they left off. The language is as gritty as the content of the show; it is not cleaned up or well polished. There is nothing performative about this language other than the fact that it is very real. Additionally, Parks has indicated that whenever the characters’ names appear as such:

Lincoln

Booth

Lincoln

Booth

she is indicating that the characters should take pauses in the order of the names she has listed them. She might direct a character to take two pauses in a row, like this:

Lincoln

Lincoln

This again relates to my initial adoration of the way this show is constructed. When you write a show where there is no world other than one of words, you run the risk of losing the audience’s attention. Here, however, you are hypnotized from the first chant of three-card monte, the first time Lincoln appears, helpless and caught between black and white, and every time there is a pause. If anything, this play teaches you how to listen, and if you give it what it needs from you—ears, mind, heart—you will understand to appreciate the pauses, the silences in conversation and in history, just as much you appreciate the words.

#playhousetuesdays #ericawachs