CHOKEHOLD

Chokehold was written by playwright Tony Pennino as a response to the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. It originally premiered as part of the Planet Connections Theatre Festival, but then had the opportunity to move to a full run at the 14th Street Y. The original director had a conflict, so I was brought in to shepherd the remounting. 

The play is profoundly disturbing: A group of young African-American activists, frustrated by the lack of progress in advancing the cause of racial justice in the United States, decide to take matters into their own hands. If White America is going to insist on casual indifference to the continued killing of POC at the hands of law enforcement, they are going to kill a young person of European descent for every young person of African descent that the system destroys. Their first victim is chosen ostensibly at random, but there is more personal history than at first meets the eye.

A taught 70 minutes, I wanted the audience to viscerally feel time running out for the characters. Tony set his play in an empty school auditorium, so I set the production in the empty space of the Y’s theatre. Technical director Kryssy Wright did a masterful lighting design using only practicals she had on hand. We had a live video feed that ratcheted up the tension, as the audience could choose which version of reality to focus on. It was a great challenge to direct a show without my typical camp histrionics–and a very satisfying one.

What’s shocking when I think back upon the 2016 production is that at that point Geoge Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others were still alive when we were running. We were asking what might happen if this country didn’t wake up, if minorities felt completely pushed against the wall. Now, the idea of being “woke” has been mockingly weaponized on the Right. We have law enforcement covering their faces and lawyers hiding their identity in court. Nine years later, and not only are people still dying, the situation only seems to have gotten worse.