Part Three: Mythology of Pussy


Opal Palmer Adisa's play Bathroom Graffiti Queen is a womanhood training rite, the feminine counterpart to Amiri Baraka's classic The Toilet which was a manhood rite on the theme of homosexuality. Opal Palmer's play deals with the myriad problems pussy can cause its owner, the woman of course. The language is befitting the bathroom or rest room--though she questions what is there to rest about? But the room is where women come to share their pain by writing on the wall and then await the Bathroom Queen's written reply or spoken to the audience while the women sit on the toilet. The young actress Tatiana Monet does multiple roles, making us wonder is she simply suffering from schizophrenia as part of the drama. The Queen, performed eloquently by Ayodele Nzingha (also director/producer) gives bits of wisdom to each woman's problem, whether it is the young girl who wonders if she should allow the boy to play with her pussy or stick his tongue in her mouth or eventually put his penis inside her, or the woman who is stalked by a man, or how should a woman deal with her period or the funky smell of yeast infection. These are the problems addressed by the Queen, herself broken from time and space in an oppressive world. Her clothing and makeup are graffiti itself, an extension of her madness since something pushed her to live in the toilet among the piss and shit of life, a victim of capitalism and slavery. Her Jamaican accent adds to the flavor of this Pan African drama.

Just as Baraka's Toilet allowed women to peer or peep inside the world of young men, the males in the audience where allowed to view the feminine private conversation and ranting. We've often wondered what women do in the restroom, why they take so long. One female just came to address the wall and pray for an answer. Thus the room became the therapy clinic for a society lacking mental health workers. The sick must heal themselves. And so the young girls turned to the elder woman for comfort even though she was broken herself, for even the doctor or priestess is a victim of pervasive white supremacy.

The evening with the Lower Bottom Playaz theatre in the heart of West Oakland, began with Marvin X's classic Flowers for the Trashman, his 1965 classic about life in the very community the theatre is located. He attended Catholic school and Prescott Elementary School across the street from the theatre, located at 10th and Peralta. His play about the father/son relationship is still relevant today as conditions have deteriorated in the black family with a majority of fathers absent. Indeed, the two men playing the lead roles grew up without fathers. We wonder what pain, what trauma is in their heads as they perform this psychodrama about silence and communication, even police abuse since they young men are in jail from an altercation with police, yes, the OPD. Imagine, we are still dealing with police abuse in Oakland forty years later, yes, even after the rise of the Black Panther Party in this same neighborhood and throughout Oakland for that matter, from Oscar Grant ( shot to death by BART police) to Louvelle Mixon who killed four cops earlier in the year. A student from Howard University, President Davis, told Marvin X the play needs to be updated as per the police. Marvin said, "No. This play is about fathers and sons, not about police brutality--that is another play. When fathers and sons come together there will be no police brutality--there will be war!" The actors included: Doe (Wes) N Reezy (Joe), Wolfhawkjaguar (Negro), D'Leezy Coleman (white man) and High Beats Entertainment (jailer).

This show continues tonight. If you live in West Oakland or anywhere in the Bay, you need to make it down to the Sister Thea Bowman Theatre, 10th and Peralta.