Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at the University of Michigan is a special day in which the U-M community comes together to celebrate the legacy of Dr. King, and explore our roles in activism. As a part of this year’s MLK Symposium, playwright and actor April Dae Rochon brought to campus a “15-character one-woman play” that explored multiple stories of poverty in present-day United States. This play, “I’MMA DO ME,” challenged the audience to look at the issue of poverty in an entertaining and educational way.
Ms. Rochon gave her performance of “I’MMA DO ME” to a full house on Monday, January 18 at 7pm. I had a chance to attend her encore performance on the day after, on Tuesday, with my fellow Residential Staff (ResStaff) members.
Through her performance, Ms. Rochon has convinced me that theater is a powerful tool for social change. By hearing and recreating real stories from real people, and presenting those in an entertaining and eye-opening form, Ms. Rochon gives the audience a shared experience that all audience members could reflect on together. “I’MMA DO ME” gives us a lens to talk about the cultural experience that not all audience members may share — poverty, drug addiction, living with constant fear of gun shootings, police brutality, teen pregnancy, college discussion on privilege at a “unique” university, and many others. Throughout the play, members of the audience nodded, snapped, cringed, groaned, laughed, sighed, and clapped — because many of us could relate to the sentiments shared on stage, although our experiences are not the same at all.
At the conclusion of this play, Ms. Rochon and the director of the play, Mr. Lumumba Reynolds, engaged us in a dialogue on what this theatric experience was like for us — what made us uncomfortable? What did you see? What didn’t you see? Do we know these characters in our lives? It is difficult to talk about what you don’t know without any shared cultural representations of them, and it was amazing to see this play acting as an agent for that difficult dialogue to happen with total strangers in the room. Ms. Rochon also shared with us the importance of presenting the reality, regardless of who is in the audience. Because the play presents ugly pictures of white privilege and extreme inequality, some audience members may not be as open as others. Even with that danger, she firmly believes in not watering down the truths and meaning what she says. This philosophy is extremely important in my work as a performing artist and an activist. I learned from this “talk-back” session just as much as I did from the play itself.
During the scene with six college students arguing about privilege (represented by differently colored pencils), an African American student character in the play declares: “Luxury of being ignorant is one among many things we can’t afford.” By seeing “I’MMA DO ME,” we could take the first step to combat ignorance — self-education on the issues of poverty. It’s a powerful example of how theater can influence the society.
