Riting: Ben Levinson on Edgar Arceneaux: UNTIL, UNTIL, UNTIL
Until, Until, Until… is a sort of trans-dimensional replay of Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural Gala. A non-chronological relapse that collapses the tragedy of an individual (Ben Vereen) into the social trauma of a collective (black Americans past, present, and future), finding their collision in a peak moment of societal descent. Frank Lawson plays Ben Vereen, a performer who met public shame after his tribute to vaudeville performer Bert Williams was cut short by ABC. The edit that the network made omitted the critical second half of Vereen’s performance in which he wiped his face of the blackface makeup that he had donned for his portrayal. This gesture was intended as a critique of the storied violence that blackface represents. Without it, the already precarious use of blackface by Vereen (at a celebration of Reagan nonetheless) had even less to hold it up. In Until, Until, Until… we see Arceneaux’s and Lawson’s Vereen not only prepare for this fateful performance, but relive it through hazy repetitions in a nightmarish recursion.
In advance of the LAX Festival we asked Riting.org to partner with us in profiling the twelve pieces in the festival.
Edgar’s piece, UNTIL, UNTIL, UNTIL, opens on October 17th, 2018, at the Bootleg Theater in the Los Angeles Exchange [LAX] Festival and runs again on October 19th and 20th.. Details can be found here.
Riting is an experiment in writing that engages with performance happening now in Los Angeles. Riting is a ground for encounters between artists, their critical community, and the public they belong to. Riting brings together a multiplicity of bodies and a polyphony of voices. Riting supposes there is no definitive untangling. Riting assumes mutuality of investment in the ecology of performance activity in this city.
