Dutchman’s 60th Anniversary: Confronting Unconventiality, Racism, and Relevancy

Note: This story contains spoilers on the Dutchman play.

Photo by Randall Ross via Instagram

After 60 years, Amiri Bakara’s play Dutchman could’ve been written today. Filled with tension, lust, hatred, and pettiness, Bakara, also known as LeRoi Jones, created one of the most paramount playwrights of the 20th century. To celebrate the 1964 premiere at Cherry Lane in Manhattan, Bushwick’s Gracemoon Arts Company and Theatre recreated the Obie Award-winning play to acknowledge that although it was written over half a century ago, themes like racism, civil rights, class, sexuality, identity, and complicity are still pertinent.

Dutchman takes place on a New York City subway during the peak of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. Daren Herbert and Leah Doz play Clay and Lula, who exchange intense conversations of confusion, spontaneity, passion, aggression, and violence. Clay, a Black man on his way to a friend’s party, is startlingly approached by Lula, a Jewish woman who is aimlessly traveling on the train. She boards the train eating an apple, symbolic of Adam and Eve, seductively luring Clay in for some commuting company. The train represents a confined space that limits people from escaping until they reach their destinations.

As Clay minds his business reading his book, Lula remains persistent in engaging with him, so she hands him an apple from her large duffle bag that never reveals what is inside or where she is going. Thinking about how crucial it was to mind your business as a Black man in the 1960s (and still today), it was alluring to find how easily Clay responded to Lula’s provocative and frustrating questions and statements. In less than an hour, the surface-level interaction turns into an intimate questioning of one another’s identity and lifestyle through stereotypes and microaggressions. Her predatory, degrading, and hyper-sexual behavior displays that no matter how vulgar she acts or talks, Clay is subjected not to react. However, none of Clay’s calm responses compare to Lula’s harsh assertments.

Photo by Randall Ross via Instagram

White bystanders continuously board and leave the train, observing yet not interacting with Clay and Lula’s rollercoaster-of-a-ride conversation. However, one Black woman (Gabrielle Graham) never gets off the train. She sits in the corner without making eye contact with the only other Black person. She is an innocent church woman, but her discomfort is conspicuous. She makes no verbal response, but on the inside, she feels the urge to divert the conversation between Clay and Lula. This woman is no stranger to Clay. It turns out she lost her virginity to him, but it’s unclear whether Clay doesn’t remember her or refuses to acknowledge her throughout the entire train ride. As hard as he tries to mind his business, his attention is set on Lula, positively and negatively.

Lula often asks Clay rhetoric, open-ended questions that leave Clay very few options on what to say and how to respond — verbally and physically. Questions begin with who he is and where he’s going and quickly escalate to questions of racism, sexualization, self-purpose, and what it’s like to be a middle-class Black man in New York City. She successfully pushed his buttons. Lula has hassled him to the point of the ancestral, internalized Black rage. Her triggering remarks lead Clay to respond with verbal violence, screaming in her face and finally concerning the white train riders. He continues to make an impassioned speech about the Black experience versus the white experience, but Lula doesn’t stop. She provokes him to the point of no return, driving Clay to threaten to kill her and every white person on the train, then slapping and beating her.

The bystanders grow concerned and finally take action toward the beaten Lula on the subway floor. As they scuffle on the floor, the white men pull Clay off of her, and in the blink of an eye, she stabs him in the chest. He dies quickly. The Black woman runs to his lifeless body on the floor and sobs over it, most likely regretting not intervening before it was too late. Lula demands the white men to drag him off the train, and they comply without questioning or thinking they could be an accomplice to murder. Instead of getting off the train out of fear of being caught for murder, Lula’s privilege kept her sitting on the train.

Photo by Randall Ross via Instagram

Despite crying, an emotionless look in her eye makes us question who Lula really is and what her intentions with Clay were in the first place. In a quick turn of events in the very last scene, Lula reveals that she is actually a white-passing Black woman after taking off her straight-haired wig. Underneath was a much more coiled and curly hair texture. This scene was not initially written in Baraka’s script but was envisioned by Gracemoon’s artistic director and co-founder, Michèle Lonsdale-Smith.

The moral of the story applies today when it comes to police brutality and the white savior complex: No matter how much a white person provokes a Black person, it’s crucial that the Black person remains the bigger person because the narrative will always stand that the white person is the victim. Regardless of the severity of the situation, Black people will always end up on the short end of the stick. Dutchman raises the question, “After years of talking about it and organizing, how can we dismantle our oppressors after centuries of racism, marginalization, and suppression?”

Photo by Randall Ross via Instagram

Many people asked Lonsdale-Smith why she chose to make a rendition of Dutchman and why it is today. Her response: “Why the fuck not?” While segregation may no longer be around, society is far from true justice and equity, especially for Black people. Because of that, she and co-founder and Head of Business Development Randall Ross, created Gracemoon Arts. Their mutual love for film, television, and acting turned into 25 years of dreaming and working toward creating a safe space in Bushwick for those in film and the arts to thrive.

With 18 artist members and counting, Gracemoon Arts offers classes and mentorship in acting, writing, and directing. To bridge the gap between the participating artists and the viewers, Dutchman kicked off the company’s first post-show conversation series in the salon behind the theatre. Each play will be followed by a conversation, with topics including race, misogyny, the abuse of sex, art, addiction, and love. Gracemoon’s ultimate goals are to understand why we say and do things the way we do, explore unresolved human motivation through acting, and aim for a more humane world.