Angry Black White Boy

An Intersection for the Arts World Premiere Play Written and Adapted by Dan Wolf
from the book by Adam Mansbach
Directed by Sean San José

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Angry Black White Boy is based on Adam Mansbach's ruthlessly funny and scathing satire about the complexities of race and identity in America. Told through the eyes of Macon, a young, Jewish man obsessed with righting the wrongs that have been levied against Black people throughout history, this vigilante story delves into his conflicted mind, psyche and guilt. The play explodes through Macon - a young man burdened by this nation's past and white privilege - as he studiously and compulsively sets out to rob his white taxi passengers in an attempt to somehow balance the scales. However, his robberies go tragically - and comically - haywire, pushing him to the forefront of a national debate. This theatrical 're-mix' for the stage incorporates text adapted and melded with original source material, freestyle and verse rap, live Hip Hop music, ballet and Hip Hop dance. Created with a hybridized style and approach, Angry Black White Boy combines theatrical storytelling with powerful, innovative and contemporary Hip Hop styles. The story of Macon, his conflicted mind and how he escapes or embraces his identity, is part of the complex journey - part satire, part scathing expose on contemporary American culture. This exciting new project from Intersection's Hybrid Project is a mixture of history, mystery, music and theatrical mythmaking. By accessing and embracing Hip Hop elements and forms - verse, rap, dance, beatboxing and music - Angry Black White Boy will offer new inroads into expressing and exposing issues of propriety and legacy. The production unites Dan Wolf with his Felonious band-mate, Tommy Shepherd, as they purposefully explore and expand the boundaries of theatre and storytelling, crossing cultural, aesthetic and social borders by merging growing Hip Hop styles and techniques in order to forge new performance language and styles.

 

 

ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY
By Dan Wolf from the novel by Adam Mansbach

One
TRADER

Microphones, loop machine, mpc, keyboard, cdj.
A white man, MACON, stands, at the turntables.
A black man- NIQUE /Jihad/Fleet/Professor- enters creating sounds and music underneath and over Macon's story - the soundtrack Macon plays for himself inside his head.
Another black man- ANDRE/Lajuan/ Omari- enters next to Macon.
Another white man- GUY/Red/ Officer/ Reporters- enter standing alone in the center- the unseen battle inside Macon’s head, the one he moves with but doesn’t see.
MACON
What the hell? 

ALL
What the hell?  What the hell? What the hell?

MACON
What the hell?  I mean how does a white Jewish kid from the suburbs end up robbing white passengers in his taxi cab? 
Angry Black White Boy.
What the hell?

ALL (vocal rhythmic build):
What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?

GUY         Angry

ANDRE     Struggling

NIQUE     Black

MACON     Running

GUY         White

ANDRE     Nigga
       
MACON     Boy
       
NIQUE     Cracker

MACON     Evil

N/G/A         What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?

MACON     Down.  What the hell?

N/G/A         What the hell.  What the hell?

MACON     Angry

ANDRE     You stupid

NIQUE     Black

GUY         Sorry

MACON     White

ANDRE     Sorry

MACON     Boy

NIQUE/GUY     Dam you stupid

GUY/MACON     white white is

NIQUE/ANDRE     black black is

GUY/MACON      white white is

NIQUE/ANDRE      Black is black is

GUY/MACON     white white is

NIQUE/ANDRE     black black is

GUY/MACON      white white is

NIQUE/ANDRE      Black is black is

“Black is Black” Jungle Brothers and then the three others led by “Nique” create the song
and then live mix to “Public Enemy #1” to “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” to “Flavor of the Month”

NIQUE   Hurry up and get a scoop –

ANDRE/GUY  Hurry up and get a scoop –

MACON  Hurry up and get a scoop before it’s gone.

“Flavor of the Month” continues.  GUY moves his body in a pop lock ballet as he shadows MACON’S text.

MACON
I was a fourteen-year-old whiteboy in a Malcolm X T-shirt, alone at the first annual Boston Hip Hop Conference, heart fluttering with intimidation and delight as scowling baldheaded old schoolers pointed at my chest—

OG/Nique
Whatchu know about that man?

MACON
“Elijah Muhammad's old Caucasian creation myth” –

OG
--And white folks were called devils.

MACON
But are all white people devils?  Can there be exceptions?  What about that dude Paul C., who'd engineered Eric B & Rakim's album?   Who but white folks, my folks, have been so brutal for so long?
To answer that question—

Sounds of New York City - honking cars, screeching tires, people moving and talking - is created live on stage by the men. They move, popping and locking, in and out on the grid that envelopes MACON. 

This is how it starts.  It’s a little past rush hour now and I – Macon Detornay, New York City’s newest cabbie – swing my yellow cab downtown and flip on my radio and relax as the voice of Kool DJ Red Alert introduces an old school set on Hot 97 FM, the station whose tagline

FROM CAB STEREO
“where hip hop lives”

MACON
has inspired the underground MC to declare himself dead.

JIHAD/ Nique creates the beats to "Paid in Full"

FROM CAB STEREO
“I useta roll up/this is a hold up, ain't nothin' funny/stop smilin'/don't nobody move but the money”

MACON
Rakim Allah intones, smooth with the roughness, reflecting on the tax-free paper clocked before he

MACON & RAKIM
“learned to earn/cause I'm Righteous”

MACON
I know the rules, as much as any white boy can, first from listening to the lyrics and then from living at Lajuan’s crib where black men who called themselves Gods sat around all day with quarter-masted eyelids from smoking blunts. I learned the most from Jihad- a Newport smoking monologue spitting herbologist with matching Nikes for every rugby shirt he owed and a penchant for talking God Body Science from one mouth corner:

JIHAD
I'm sayin', God, that nigga ODB the God, God.  If that nigga Old Dirty Bastard was President black people wouldn't have no more problems... no more Tawanas, no more Jones Beaches, no more...other shit...

MACON
And hustle ego watch-me as unfiltered as New York tap water out the other:

JIHAD
"I drop science like girl's be droppin' babies enough to make a nigga go crazy!/ energy buildin' takin' all types of medicines/yo ass thought you were better than"

MACON
Everything was too much in that crib. The drinks too strong, the weed too harsh, the conversation too aggressive.

JIHAD
Do the knowledge: boom it’s like magnetic attraction. The gravitation doesn’t work unless the shit is mutual, so ‘love is blind’ is Now Cipher, God. It's like how some cats say that niggas can't be racist, you know, you know the science on that, you can't be racist unless you have the power to be racist, so boom, you can't say you in love unless you both in love; one person in love is like the sound of one hand clapping, God.

MACON
The apartment was a sitcom of jokes, pointless battle of rhetoric and flow skills and rhymes and rhymes and beats to the rhymes:

JIHAD/Nique and LAJUAN/Andre Freestyle, after 12 bars MACON joins.

MACON
Oh, oh, oh here comes the white boy
Repping for myself I aint no decoy
A true bred B-Boy, I spit it you feel me
every-occasion, rain or pestilence query –

JIHAD/LUJUAN
who's going to the weedspot?

MACON
who's going to the weedspot?

JIHAD/LUJUAN
who's going to the weedspot?

This builds.  MACON is really feeling it. JIHAD and LUJUAN stop but MACON keeps going.

MACON
Who’s going to the weedspot ?

JIHAD/LUJUAN
You going to the weedspot!

MACON
I mean, damn- every time I got to go!

LAJUAN
I got you – this time.

LAJUAN steps out, sound shifts to city sounds, taking MACON into the city that surrounds him until

MACON
A hand shoots up on the west side of Wall Street, and I swerve to the duke's side.

GUY in his early thirties clambers into the backseat, talking on his cell phone.
GUY
Eighty-fifth and Fifth.  I’m fucking late, the reservation was for six.

MACON
Mr. Eighty-fifth and Fifth, who is this guy?  Who is he- I know!-he has the same rock-solid Roman nose as a guy, a frat-boy type, I knew in high school.

Sound: “Egg Man”
ROMAN NOSE/Guy and MACON size each other up.

ROMAN NOSE/Guy
You think you're pretty cool, huh Macon dude? Sitting at the black table, kickin' it like you're Vanilla Ice or something? People laugh at you, dude. I don't even know you, and I sit there and laugh my ass off.

MACON
Are we finished?
Guy grabs me and slams me up against a locker, mad corny, like we’re characters in a John Hughes movie.

OMARI/Andre, saunters into view, GUY sees OMARI, backs up away from MACON

ROMAN NOSE/Guy
Hey Omari , dude, what’s up.

OMARI/Andre
Wassup Macon.

MACON
Hey man.

OMARI
(to GUY)  See you at practice.

As soon as OMARI rounds the corner:

ROMAN NOSE/Guy
You better watch your attitude, bro. I don't care how tight you are with the niggers. I'll kick your fuckin ass.

GUY tries to make MACON flinch once, twice and then grabs his cell phone and bangs it against his leg- jerking us back into the present.

I can't get a signal on this piece of shit.  (GUY knocks on the cab partition)  Hey, turn that down, will you? I gotta hear enough of this as it is, two in the morning last night, these guys in their SUVs are rattling my windows three floors up. What I want to know is how they can afford forty thousand dollar cars with custom stereos. We're in the wrong business, bro. First thing tomorrow, I'm gonna go get an Adidas sweat suit and find myself a nice street corner. Sell a little crack and buy myself a Lexus.  (into phone) Hello? I know I’m late, I’m in a cab and we’re just getting on the FDR. Ten minutes. So who's this chick tonight, Kim's friend? Kaliyah, Kalikah, something like that--she hot?  Black?  Nice!

MACON
I jerk the wheel, cab cuts across two lanes onto the shoulder of the road I slam the brakes.   Guy careens forward, whacks his head, and falls back into his seat.

GUY moves his body in a pop lock ballet as he physically illuminates the taxi as it skids off the road.
GUY
What the hell? What are you, some kind of maniac?

MACON locks the door
MACON
Shut up!  Gimme your phone.

GUY gives MACON the phone and he turns it off. MACON reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gun.
Take out your wallet, and gimme your necktie.  Hurry.  Look up and I'll shoot you in the face.

GUY
Okay, just don't hurt me.

GUY pop locks taking out his wallet and throws it on the seat, along with his tie and watch.

MACON
I didn't ask for your watch, throw it out.

GUY
But –

MACON
Throw it out!

GUY throws the watch out.

Alright. Now.  Where were we going?  Eighty-fifth and Fifth, was it?

GUY
I-I can get out right here. Please?

MACON
You sure, homeboy?  I wouldn't want Kim and Kaliyah, Kalikah -  you know her black friend - to think you'd stood them up.

GUY
Why are you doing this to me?  What do you want from me?  Why me?

MACON
Because you're a typical ignorant white devil asshole and you and everybody like you deserves to be robbed every day of your life, somebody has to pay. Now get out of here. If I see you even halfway looking at my plates I'll back up and run your stupid ass over. Move.
GUY gets out of the cab, onto the shoulder of the highway.

I bet you this is the first time you ever regretted the color of your skin.
I’m looking at my face in the reflection of the rearview mirror moments after leaving the still sweating scene of the crime. The big question, I guess, is how I got here, on this vibe. It would be nice if there were some simple answer, some creation myth -- but there's not. My parents are standard-issue white liberals, just as puzzled as anybody. As far as I'm concerned the question is not how I got this way, but how the rest of y'all didn't.  Cuz you did not.  It’s like you’re not chained to the same history that I am.  I mean how does a white Jewish kid from the suburbs end up robbing white passengers in the name of black people in his taxi cab anyway? What the hell?!  Believe it or not I came here to go to college –to go to Columbia –and to meet him:

MACON grabs a book as ANDRE WALKER enters wearing a Lakers jersey and Raiders track pants. MACON sees ANDRE as he puts on an old baseball cap.
Sound: “California Love”

ANDRE
Andre Walker, West Coast’s finest, representing Cali to the fullest in New York City.

MACON
Andre Walker. Great grand son of Moses ‘Fleet’ Walker, baseball’s first black major leaguer. 
MACON opens the book and reads as FLEET appears.

FLEET
I’m the only player to take advantage of the grandfather clause written into the league’s new rule.

RED/ Guy
‘Negroes under contract can serve out the remainder of this- their final- seasons with their teams.’

FLEET
Every other colored player is gone. They walked out of pride. Out of pride, I stayed. Nobody is gonna run me out of my chosen profession one second earlier than law allows.

RED
The man most responsible for the new rule—

FLEET
Or at least the man claiming the most credit is Anson.

CAP/Macon
Cap.  Cap Anson.  This is my fucking history.  I am the great grandson of the racist cracker baseball god Cap Anson.  Me- Macon Detornay and Cap Anson.

FLEET
Chicago’s first baseman and manager, the greatest hitter the game has ever known. Anson has done more for the games popularity than any man, and when he talks people listen.

CAP/Macon  (reading from the book)
Why are the coloreds allowed to play with white men and dirty up the Great American Pastime?  Does the league want to risk a colored player loosing his temper, as the race is notorious for doing, and in a fit of rage turn on a white opponent with a bat? --This cracker is worried about black rage?!- he should have seen what his white great grand kid did--Integrated play is a disaster waiting to happen. Baseball is a game of dignity and poise. A white man’s game.

FLEET
Thus on April 29, 1889 I am not the only colored man in a uniform, but in the entirety of Atlanta, Georgia’s Robert E Lee Stadium. Out in the decaying bleachers is a section for coloreds only, but it stays empty as the stadium fills up. I wonder what they think of me for staying. I ain’t out to be a hero but it occurs to me that folks might think I’m selling out by staying where I ain’t wanted.

FLEET and RED DONNER take to the outfield to warm up.  They toss the ball back and forth. FLEET throws back to RED, but the ball sails over RED’S outstretched glove.

Say, Red, what’s the matter?  You lose it in the sun?

RED/ GUY
Behind you! You see that?

FLEET
Klansmen.

RED
Must be about 50 of ‘em, costumed and everything.

FLEET
A cheer like rifle fire rises up and I realize it’s coming from the exact place I am gonna stand, with my back to the enemy, engaged in what suddenly seems like an impossibly foolish, infantile game and an undertaking as serious as anything in life could ever be.

RED
I talked to one of them. He said they’re not here to cause any trouble. Just here to celebrate the purification of baseball. Maybe you ought to take the day off.

FLEET
I’m the third baseman. I’m playing.  When I step to the plate every voice comes to life. Without meaning to I turn and look at the Klan delegation behind third. I dig in and cock my bat, dying to swing through the sea of hate. The wind up, the pitch.  A body blow that stings my thigh.  I knew they were gon’ try to kill me.

MACON
Fuck.  The crowd roars.

FLEET
I jog to first where Cap Anson is waiting.

ANSON
Tell ‘em to take you out ‘fore things get ugly.

FLEET
I take a big lead, as much to get away from Anson as to get a jump on the pitch.

ANSON
You best quit while you still can, boy.

FLEET
Sometimes a man just has to run.

Sound: “Can’t Keep Running Away”
ANDRE and MACON square off as FLEET fades into the past.