Word: twilighter
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...Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is extremely unsettling. In the tight darkness of Leverett Old Library, our distance from the riots is shattered as we descend the steps into the arena where we sit, often catching stray spotlight and in full view of the other audience members and actors. The space affords little of the accustomed anonymity, and from the start it becomes clear that the aim is not to please, but to trouble...
According to Director Tammy Chang, the goal of Twilight is not just to awaken the dormant phantom of the '92 riots, but to use it to re-expose issues of racial segregation and inequality. "Someone who comes away from the show thinking that they've seen the 'black perception' of the Rodney King Beating, or the 'Latino' perspective on police brutality will have missd the point completely," she says. Though the Rodney King verdict and the ensuing riots have all but vanished from the discourse of this university, discredited for their sensationalism, Twilight reinstates their importance in the struggle...
...most recently have been published in book form. Because of the original one-woman format, and also because the material comes from one-on-one interviews, the performance is devoid of dialogue or character interaction. Generally, such a format would risk looking like an acting exercise, but in Twilight it implicitly explains one of the reasons behind the riots. Chang notes that "each character lives in a box, limited by experience and what they know." The lack of interaction speaks to the lack of dialogue in the city, the silence of segregation. The riots were the result of an inability...
Obviously, Twilight was politically-charged. Presented by the AAA players and Black Cast-organizations whose political and artistic goals are closely connected-it was clear that art here was subservient to the show's political message. Outside of the monologues, every element of the production was representative of "the message." Twilight is produced in the round, and over each of the four sets of bleachers is suspended a drop representing one of the four ethnicities that clashed in the riots. The audience is divided by these pendants into neighborhoods; Black, Korean, Latino, White, "drawing the audience into the conflict," according...
...characters' problems, and in the recounting of their riot experiences, lives a realism far stronger than footage of a burning building or the photograph of a beaten man. Further, while the riots were wrapped up by the media and dismissed as another news item of 1992, the conflict in Twilight remained unresolved. As a non-fiction work, the conflict that was opened by the monologues, remained opened and messy at the plays conclusion. When a peaceful ending was denied, and the unsettling reality of the play remained, the fragmented aesthetic of the production became sensical. The aesthetic incongruity...