Enacting difference: Marita Bonner's 'Purple Flower' and the ambiguities of race

African American Review, Fall, 1998 by Allison Berg, Merideth Taylor

Suggestions for visual symbols for the flower, then, ranged from a glittering mirror ball (representing materialism) to an empty spotlight (representing the empty hope of attaining freedom while anyone remained oppressed) to a mixed-race baby (representing a utopian future in which race "wouldn't matter" and all would live in harmony). Our attempts to concretize the Purple Flower again highlighted the ambiguity of Bonner's message, with suggestions wavering between racially specific and "universal" interpretations. Consensus was (again) not reached; the issue was resolved only through individual student initiative when one student created a large, and fairly literal, purple flower out of craft materials and brought it into the final rehearsal. Suspended over the heads of the actors, it glittered in its own spotlight (our sole use of theatrical lighting).

Staging. Throughout our preparations, classroom debates about the play's meaning were interspersed with movement exercises designed to help students feel, as well as intellectualize, some of the play's conflicts. One such exercise asked a randomly selected majority of students to link hands and form a circle excluding the minority. The minority then had to attempt to sneak or force themselves into the circle. Before switching roles, each group had the opportunity to voice insights about what the exercise evoked; the students who "made it" into the circle expressed guilt for leaving others outside the circle as well as the sense that their new position "on the inside" was uncomfortably constricting. These deceptively simple exercises allowed us to discuss feelings of solidarity, exclusion, isolation, and anxiety that accompanied different students' identification with a dominant or subordinate group. In particular, they made more obvious some differences in perception between most of the white students, who had not thought of themselves as members of a racial group, and most of the black students, who had.

Informed by such exercises and discussions, students divided into three groups to devise physical actions as well as costuming for the staged reading. The White Devils used excessive amounts of make-up to indicate the superficiality and self-aggrandizement of those closest to the flower; the Us's chose to wear matching costumes of blue jeans and black t-shirts to represent the collective identity of the Us's, in spite of their varying skin tones; the three white women who elected to take on the role of "Strivers" developed an expressionistic movement theme - involving pushing, pulling, and falling - to physicalize specific lines read by the Us's. Using each other's bodies alternately as bridges and barriers to ascending the scaffolding, these students attempted to represent both the collectivity of human struggle and the lack of solidarity that leads to literal downfall. Not surprisingly, the Strivers, who were physically the most engaged, reported having the most powerful experience in performance.