Review of Roots, Reality & Rhyme the One Woman
- Sean Ongley for Amblit Mag
Turiya Autry performed her one-woman show at Conduit Dance the following afternoon. It is a similar yet totally different space. In fact, her monologue, Roots Reality and Rhyme, is similar yet totally different as compared to the play reviewed above. It is a personal narrative that incorporates poems from a book of the same title. It is a memoir of sorts, her life story told in chunks, like a recollection of previous selves with old problems. And it ends as she launches on to a new path, shedding the skin of her past life.
There is a projection screen that provides scenery, fast set changes, and two short video pieces that helped illustrate the two key aspects of Turiya’s character. The strong-willed little girl, whom she once was and still is, battles a little boy in the jungle gym. The adult woman finds herself [struggling] to pay bills. There is a voice of reason and clarity in the whole picture, dealing with social-economic factors and the raw emotional states that rise and fall in the endless grappling for existence in the post-modern era of America.
Turiya Autry grips my attention and never lets go. Due perhaps to her enigmatic voice, the drama that pulls my heartstrings, or because of the memoir-style linear storytelling, I believe that I caught every beat. Her poems help to draw music from lines without actually introducing music. Her delivery reminds me of the “enlightened” hip-hop era that she was in college for, like early work from The Roots, Digable Planets, and Public Enemy.
After spending more than two hours with Turiya in my apartment, first listening to the State of the Union Address live on the radio, then producing a Horizon at End Times podcast with her as my guest, and now having watched her story unfold in a theater, I feel like I have a breezy window in to her soul. But despite this, there is some mystery. I see her rage and love in coexistence with cordiality and raw honesty in a continuous contradiction that seems to resolve with this being’s output: the poem.
Her example is a powerful one, showing the strength of will, the equalizing powers of love and acceptance, personal responsibility and determination. It goes about the objective of providing commentary on society and economics while peeking inside the person whose life might be iconic of social ills and economic injustice.
Actually, this is only a beginning. Turiya plans to continue developing the work. In fact, this was more of a workshop for her show. She read the script from the page and converged a crew to make a rudimentary feature-length production. The rough edges of the new work were not apologized for, and they didn’t need to be.
- Sean Ongley - Ambit Magazine
There is a projection screen that provides scenery, fast set changes, and two short video pieces that helped illustrate the two key aspects of Turiya’s character. The strong-willed little girl, whom she once was and still is, battles a little boy in the jungle gym. The adult woman finds herself [struggling] to pay bills. There is a voice of reason and clarity in the whole picture, dealing with social-economic factors and the raw emotional states that rise and fall in the endless grappling for existence in the post-modern era of America.
Turiya Autry grips my attention and never lets go. Due perhaps to her enigmatic voice, the drama that pulls my heartstrings, or because of the memoir-style linear storytelling, I believe that I caught every beat. Her poems help to draw music from lines without actually introducing music. Her delivery reminds me of the “enlightened” hip-hop era that she was in college for, like early work from The Roots, Digable Planets, and Public Enemy.
After spending more than two hours with Turiya in my apartment, first listening to the State of the Union Address live on the radio, then producing a Horizon at End Times podcast with her as my guest, and now having watched her story unfold in a theater, I feel like I have a breezy window in to her soul. But despite this, there is some mystery. I see her rage and love in coexistence with cordiality and raw honesty in a continuous contradiction that seems to resolve with this being’s output: the poem.
Her example is a powerful one, showing the strength of will, the equalizing powers of love and acceptance, personal responsibility and determination. It goes about the objective of providing commentary on society and economics while peeking inside the person whose life might be iconic of social ills and economic injustice.
Actually, this is only a beginning. Turiya plans to continue developing the work. In fact, this was more of a workshop for her show. She read the script from the page and converged a crew to make a rudimentary feature-length production. The rough edges of the new work were not apologized for, and they didn’t need to be.
- Sean Ongley - Ambit Magazine