An African American man stands alone and tall on the stage to announce breaking news: A 400-year old slave shop has risen out of the Hudson River. Over the course of 80 minutes, this single performer, award-winning actor, singer, writer, composer and poet, Daniel Beaty, transforms into more than 40 different figures spanning social class, gender and generations, all coping with the wounds of slavery. Indeed, “Emergency,” now playing at the Geffen Playhouse, offers a rewarding performance of borderline humor and serious story-telling combined with urban poetry and heartfelt song; for, regardless of race, we are all haunted by a collective history that must be examined in order to be free.

Poet-performer Daniel Beaty initially stunned East Coast audiences in “Emergency’s” Off-Broadway review and garnered a 2007 Obie Award for Excellence, as well as a 2006 Culture Award from New York Magazine. In his West Coast Premiere, the Yale School of Drama-trained actor and HBO’s “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry” slam poet veteran, commands his Los Angeles subscribing audience with a captivating, resonant voice and emotive, yet subtle physical body.

On a bare stage with shadowy silhouettes projected onto moving video screens, “Emergency” tells the story of a young poet named Rodney who, in the midst of competing in “America’s Next Top Poet” hosted by the Tyra Branks-esque Sharita, learns that his father has climbed aboard the slave ship. With an extensive film repertoire under his belt, Charles Randolph Wright directs Beaty modestly, allowing him to not only take on each character after the other quickly and with ease, but to bring his whole self to “Emergency.”

Through visceral character studies, Beaty seamlessly transitions from Rodney’s father—a Shakespeare scholar whose mental health already disturbed after his wife’s murder, has found himself pleading with the spirit of an ancient African chief, into a young, ghetto-raised boy expressing his ability to temporarily escape racism through his love of singing in the Harlem Gospel Choir, into a “slave-ologist,” who guides the audience through the West Africa slave dungeons filled with frightful cries of abused prisoners past. Along with these rich characters, Beaty’s arousing bass vocals offer a soundtrack of fragmented black spirituals, easing the audience along.

In the end, the slave ship Remembrance sinks back into the Hudson, leaving a trail of unchained bones behind it, and Beaty proclaims: “We are all in a state of emergency, not fully alive…It’s a pain to be free,” but overall, “We are all as free as we want to be.”

By Danielle Jacoby

Photo Credit: Michael Lamont