Last week I got the opportunity to
visit Krannert for a performance of a show, Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea.The show was about a young boy named Dontrell who lived in Maryland. The first scene opens as Dontrell awakes from a dream where he sees his ancestor jumping to his death off of a slave ship. The story startles him, but he is desperate to find out more about this ancestor and this story. He goes to his family, his newfound lover, and finally to the sea to find out the significance of his dream and his family history.
After the show, I was so impressed by the performance of the actors. I felt that their lives were real, and that I had seen a live reenactment of a true story. The actors put so much emotion and feeling into their performance and that is what I think made the story so inspiring to me. While watching the performance, I noticed the contemporary play actually had a lot of similarities to things I read in Invisible Man. The writer of the play, Nathan Alan Davis is known for his philosophical, and creative works. This possibly being the reason I find similarities between his and Ralph Ellison’s works. The first similarity I noticed was in Dontrell. He was searching for his ancestor and this reminded me of the Yam scene in Invisible Man. As the Narrator finds his roots he is able to feel this sense of freedom and connection to people who came before him. Dontrell’s story is centered around finding these roots, figuring out what kind of impact they will have on his life. For Dontrell’s grandfather, his connection to these same ancestors is what got him put into an insane asylum. But when Dontrell sees his dream, and the writings his grandfather left behind he believes fully in the story of his lost ancestor. This idea also related to Ellison’s ideas of insanity. When we met the Vet in Invisible Man, to the reader, he seems more than sane, he seems almost enlightened. But to the Narrator, he is “crazy” because that makes it easier to ignore what the Vet is saying. For Dontrell’s father, he refuses to talk about his father, in his eyes his father was just a crazy man with a dream. But for Dontrell, he sees the same thing reflected in himself as his Grandfather. This in turn also brings into question both of their sanities. The exception for Dontrell is that he has been accepted to Stanford on a full ride, so his education makes his insanity more credible. Though in the case of the Vet, his being a remarkable doctor will never take away the fact that he is considered insane. The paradoxes and similarities seen between the two stories I find very captivating. Though I can’t say for sure, I would guess that Davis pulls some of his ideas from reading the works of famous authors like Ellison when he develops his script. In the case of Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea, I was very impressed by the narrative, and the performance of the show.
