It’s Not Too Late
2020 is shaping up to be a year for the ages, and perhaps, the sort of revolutionary year Markeith Wiley longed for when he created and performed It’s Not Too Late at Seattle’s On the Boards in 2016. Framed as a late night talk show cum protest, the multidisciplinary show featured the recurring image of Wiley reaching desperately through a hole of floating light in black space, in turns holding his breath and silently screaming, only to be pulled back into the blackness by a faceless dark figure. The work seemed to ask: whose voice is allowed to be heard, and what happens when new voices reveal uncomfortable truths?
The work opens with a LoraBeth Barr (a white woman) as Jodie, cheerfully warming up the audience for the show. She tells bad jokes, instructs them on reaction cues, and teaches them an awkwardly whitewashed version of the “Whip and Nene.” All the while, our host, Markeith Wiley appears to be asleep (or dead?) at his desk behind her.
Upon Jodie’s departure, Wiley dances a duet through the blackness of the space with a figure clad head to toe in black - his shadow, or some other sort of tethered self. Wiley is visible only in slim strips of light and small spotlights that he tries to break through. Eventually, he succeeds, and this is when the talk show begins.
Wiley’s character introduces himself as Seattle’s #1 black friend, Dushawn Brown. His pleasant and casual report with the nearly all-white audience makes it clear why he’s earned this title. Although the performance - of which I viewed a recording through OntheBoards.tv - is only four years old, much has happened since Trump took office - a central focus for much of the monologue - and many of the jokes feel dated. He addresses Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Blue Ivy; Kanye West’s feelings on Donald Trump, the “controversy” of Black Lives Matter, and America’s obsession with two mediocre Kevins - James and Hart. These ideas feel quaint today, but serve as a necessary time capsule of 2016, a time that once seemed bleak as could be.
The monologue portion of the show also involves Wiley inviting the mostly white audience members to ask him questions about black people - a scene that could have been more cringeworthy had the most provocative question not been “how often do you wash your hair?” - as well as asking them questions about being white.
One of the most intriguing sections of the show was the interview with the evening’s guest - Natasha Merritt. A black, queer mother with a bright red faux-hawk and schoolgirl plaid skirt, Merritt exudes confidence and ease, and this was the moment I was able to relax into the experience. She answered questions about blackness in Seattle with a cleverness and spontaneity that was both delightful and provocative. As she answered, the DJ (Keith White) sounded a horn with each response, making it difficult to hear some of her answers. Here, the silencing of black voices became more apparent.
Later, as he delivers another monologue - this one more uncomfortable for the audience, as it was rife with the n-word and included several black cultural references that seemed to evade them - his voice becomes distorted. After a moving performance by rapper Sketch Lightly, he returns, and the two men hug, joined by that shadow figure once again. It is here that things take a sharp turn, and Wiley as Brown begins to shout into a bullhorn, illuminating the oppression of being black in America. He begins to rage, and that is when Jodie (a real “Karen”) returns to the stage. I will not reveal the result of this struggle, but it’s a perfect and powerful move, one that deserves to be seen and examined.
While the show was certainly that of a rising artist finding his footing, it is a deft exploration of how white supremacy reigns, how black voices are controlled and often silenced, and what the consequences have historically been - from slavery, through minstrelsy, up to the current day - of speaking truth to power. 2020 feels like a culmination of all those ideas. It is curious to consider how Wiley would rework It’s Not Too Late for this year in which the world has been witness to so many tragedies against black people - the deaths of George Flloyd, Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony Mcdade, and so many more. Might the past four years have changed the title? Perhaps, now, it is too late.