Terrace Wyatt, Jr.’s: Black Man, Missouri - Terr. Studios

A KC Fringe must-see. This play excels on so many levels - it thrusts the issues of police brutality, hate crimes, senseless violence, and the perils of being Black in Kansas City directly and unflinchingly at the audience. The play combines themes of social justice and responsibility with dark magical realism and theatricality highlighting the dangers faced by our community's Black families.

Paulette Dawn deserves a Best Actress Award as Diane, a single mom from KC raising her son Mitchell (played with beautiful honesty, intense vulnerability, and more than a little wonderful nerdiness by Timothy Boykin). When Mitchell is shot and killed in a "mistaken identity case" by cops at the Plaza, Diane must process her own grief and rage while trying to force her former classmate, now a KC police officer (one involved in Mitchell's murder), to admit his culpability in a broken system. Paulette's performance as Diane is a masterclass of balancing vulnerability, strength, anger, and overwhelming weariness, as well as embracing the lighter comic moments between a mother and son.

The strengths of this piece lie in the pacing and amazing teamwork of the cast. Scenes between Diane and her son highlight the mutual care, appreciation, and teasing that goes on between a tight-knit family. The scenes between Diane and the KC Police officer crackle with the tension of two people on opposite sides of a broken system who are trying to connect. Michael Webber as the police officer expertly balances blase self-assurance with the vulnerability and self-loathing of a character whose genuine desire to help was beaten down by systemic racism of the force years ago.

These scenes are woven together by the Ensemble (Brielle Jefferson, Warren Lee, and Marcus Palmer), who theatrically drive the tension through a series of vignettes of random violence and represent the unbalanced structures of society and justice. The three actors add so much to the overall story, ranging from shocking acts to cold yet inevitable judicial verdicts that seem to validate the acts of violence plaguing the Black community. The Ensemble players do so with commitment and ease. The show would not have worked without their clever and seamless world-building.

These are conversations we need to be having, and Terrance Wyatt, Jr.'s script does not flinch, yet it does so with a heart and curiosity that draw the audience in so wholly that there were several moments of gasps, baited breath, and angry exhales as trauma piled on trauma. I cannot recommend this one enough. Please do yourself a favor and support these powerful and dynamic Black voices in the Kansas City theatre community.