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Sitchaassdown

nytheatre.com review by Yuval Boim
August 15, 2005

In an impromptu talkback session after the performance I saw at Dixon Place, Kanene Holder recounted the inspiration for the title of her one-woman show. While walking down the street, Holder encountered a woman attempting to get her resisting son into a car; flustered with his insolence and her inability to control him, the woman yelled, “SITCHAASDOWN!”. In an effort to portray her version of the urban African American experience, Holder presents Sitchaasdown, a collection of colorful characters who speak through poetry that she has written over the past few years.Though not a seasoned performer, Holder is a natural player who has the ability to plunge with ease into the skin of her characters, merging their physicality, voice, and state of being into homogenous theatrical personae. When successful, a haunting quality arrives as these pedestrian characters speak in the contemporary and idiosyncratic meters of Holder’s verse. In one instance, a character—a young woman adorned in clothes from famous fashion labels—explains “Why I am a Ghetto-Bourgeois-Girl.” Because the transition into the poetry (which is at times specific and effective and at times overly effusive) is managed with subtlety, we become aware of a bizarre and striking juxtaposition between this believable character and the language she is speaking. We briefly enter into a world where a drugged-up prostitute, a homeless woman, and Condoleezza Rice rhyme and alliterate.However, the production itself lacks craft. Holder’s enthusiasm and generosity throw her off balance. Lack of clarity in how to convey her ideas to her spectators tempts her to throws too many ingredients into the pot. She and her director, Nyaae, have not sufficiently structured the playing space. Holder spends most of her time on stage within a few feet of the first row of the audience in this already intimate space. She is so eager to share her vision that she anxiously hurls it into her audience’s lap, literally. The challenge of transitioning between characters, often embraced and celebrated with virtuosity in most one-person shows, is here entirely ignored. Holder retreats into a visible corner of the stage to perform quite elaborate and untheatrical costume changes that curtail whatever energy and focus she works so hard to build. The uneven lighting and sound become distracting, and I felt bad for Holder who, at the end of the show I saw, wound up bowing in the dark because of a technical glitch. While the overall effect of the piece is that of an informal living-room performance, it looks as if Holder, who has a good eye and ear and a lot to say about the world around her, possesses a spirit, that when combined with maturity in skill, will one day allow her to reach and entertain her audience in an accessible way.