By Sandra Smith
“Food for the Gods,” a multimedia experience focused on violence against Black people, was held on Friday and Saturday at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
The Brooklyn-based director, Nephrii Amenii, began the creative process after the execution of Troy Davis in 2011.
Davis was sentenced to the death penalty and executed in Georgia after a 20-year fight to prove his innocence in the shooting of a police officer. Seven of nine witnesses who claimed to see Davis commit the crime later retracted their statements.
Amenii attended Sarah Lawerence College for graduate school, and enrolled in an experimental writing class at the time of Davis’s execution.
“I remember showing up to class the next day and a white classmate had written a satire about it,” Amenii said. “It reminded me of a Nina Simone quote, ‘What does it feel like to be that free? Because I will never know.’”
Amenii said her feelings about the situation did not appear in words at first — mainly through sounds, which is why the background noise throughout the show is so prominent.
The piece begins by taking the audience members through a slideshow of Black men who have been killed since 1899 — while a woman gave a rage-filled opening monologue from the audience, startling audience members.
The background sounds echoed through the Clarice, while audience members were visibly affected by the discomforting and sad tone of the piece.
“I call this piece a 15-person, one-woman show because of the emotional triptych. It’s all to capture my myriad of expressions and feelings around it,” Amenii said. “It’s just not that simple. It can’t be dealt with rage alone. It can’t be dealt with indifference alone.”
Throughout the performance, each cast member used a puppet with the face of a different Black man who has been killed throughout history, like Frank Embrée, Emmett Till, and Oscar Grant III.
They ran through the stories of each man and later began the second monologue — the mother’s.
“The mother’s piece deals with the rage and the insanity that comes from grief. The pain that black women are endearing in connection to the men being killed,” Amenii said.
Che Arrington, who works in theater as a playwright and was a member of the audience, felt the most powerful aspect of the performance was the mother’s monologue.
The mother character began by holding a cloth with what seemed to be a child inside, but upon the cloth’s release, hundreds of flowers dropped to the floor.
“In my head, she was always holding a baby when she released the cloth — it was all these carnations, the same flower that was previously given out to members of the audience,” Arrington said. “For me, it symbolized all of these lost children and lost souls. It painted a really interesting metaphor.”
Natalia Fyfe, an actress based in the Washington area, attended the performance and enjoyed the hands-on feel of the performance.
“This production really utilizes many aspects of theaters that performers don’t get to see,” Fyfe said. “The lights hanging and the projections – it all makes you feel involved and like you’re a part of the experience they created.”
Amenii aimed for the performance to create a discomforting experience for the audience, in hopes of sparking a true and open conversation.
“There’s so much discomfort and shame about being honest. Be honest about your ignorance, be honest about your truth. Step one is to be able to stand together in the discomfort of it. It’s unsettling,” Amenii said.
Racialized violence is an uncomfortable topic, she said, but the opportunity for everyone to understand the true emotions behind the subject begins with being uncomfortable.
“Don’t look away. Sit with the discomfort of it. All these conversations pop up about racialized America, and that we’ve come so far, but I often feel like the conversations have yet to begin,” Amenii said.
Featured Image: Elijah Williams, who plays Frank Embree in “Food for the Gods,” focuses on the meaning of light in the third part of the performance on Dec. 8, 2023 in Kogod Theatre. Photo by Lisa Helfert.