A Riveting Production of “Until the Flood” by Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre

By Fran Zell

“Hands Up Don’t Shoot.” That’s the emblematic cry born out of nationwide protests following the fatal shooting of 18 year-old Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, ten years ago now. He was unarmed, hands raised in the air, according to several witnesses, when a cop named Darren Wilson landed six bullets in his body.

Wilson disputed the “hands up” version of the story, and was never charged with a crime.  But a few years later, Brown’s parents received a $1.5 million wrongful death settlement from the city of Ferguson, then a Black majority St. Louis suburb,  with an all-White police force. Wilson stopped Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson for walking in the middle of the quiet street where Brown lived with his grandmother. Ninety seconds later Brown was dead.      

“Hands Up Don’t Shoot.”  The words are emblazoned into the curtain that frames the stage for Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre’s riveting production of Until The Flood at Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston through November 10. It’s a documentary-style play for which acclaimed playwright and actor Dael Orlandersmith created eight composite characters from interviews with many locals affected by the shooting and subsequent weeks of unrest. The play was commissioned by the St. Louis Repertory Theater, and in its earliest productions beginning in 2016, Orlandersmith played all eight characters.

In the FJT production that honor goes to two outstanding Chicago talents:  Jazzma Pryor and Jasmine “Jaz” Robertson. Pryor is an FJT regular and also an ensemble member with Shattered Globe Theatre. Robertson, a recent transplant from Memphis, TN, makes her FJT debut in Until the Flood. She has performed with various Chicago theaters, including Imposters, Invictus, Oil Lamp, and Redtwist.

Pryor and Robertson  portray a diverse mix of people—Black, White, male, female, young and old— people from different walks of life with different fears, dreams and perspectives. None of them have walked in each other’s shoes. But the audience gets the opportunity to walk in each of theirs, at least for the span of the 10-minute monologues in which Pryor and Robertson dive deep, very deep, into the dark places that tear up each of these characters and separate them from each other.

August 9, 2014. The fateful date. And RIP Michael Brown. Those words are also written on the curtain.  If you sit close enough you will see images there of brown and black arms and hands, arms and hands, arm and hands rising up surrender-style, towards the heavens. 

A compelling set sits center stage: The Michael Brown memorial. Designed by FJT artistic director Tim Rhoze with technical director Shane Rogers, it’s a colorful, chaotic, and all too familiar mound of teddy bears, flowers, candles, photos, a balloon here and there. The sum of these lovely parts casts a hellish glow on the world of this play, and on the real world of fatal police shootings that it reflects. 

The action of the play, as seamlessly directed by Rhoze, spins around this memorial. First up is Louisa Hemphill (Jazzma Pryor), a retired teacher in her 70s whose  monologue offers historical context for Ferguson’s troubles, beginning with its years (1940-60) as a “Sundown Town.” 

Louisa reflects bitterly on the racism and segregationist policies that continued to oppress Ferguson’s Black population. She escaped for a while via City College in New York and still seethes over the “you think you’re too good for Ferguson” hostility flung at her back in the 1960s by a White shopkeeper and her young Black clerk. 

There is a recurring theme in this play about the desire to escape Ferguson with its poverty and  constant harassment from the cops for the pettiest of reasons. But there’s also the not so deeply lurking fear that escape could come by a bullet.

A retired White cop named Rusty Harden (Jasmine Robertson), doesn’t recognize fear in young Black men when cops draw their guns on them.  He sees their faces and body language as confrontational, “as if they want to die.” And yes, there is that element in it, according to Hassan (Jazzma Pryor), a high school kid who pedals up to the memorial on a bicycle in a red, button down Cardinals shirt. He wants to live, he wants out of Ferguson, and yes he’s afraid. But he won’t give the cops the satisfaction of knowing that. He tells about the time he stared them down with a “go ahead and kill me” look the day he and a few friends were ordered at gunpoint to get out of the car they were riding in because the driver was going a couple miles over the speed limit.

And so it goes. Five more characters will offer gripping monologues.  Notable among them is Paul (Jasmine Robertson) another high school student, but this time studious, a kid who dreams of going to Berkeley to study art history.  But he’s frequently reminded of the odds of that happening, for instance on the occasion he was stopped by a Ferguson cop who accused him of stealing the art books he was carrying.

Probably the most unforgettable, most chilling character is Dougray Smith (Jasmine Robertson), the white electrician/landlord  who stands in front of the memorial spouting pure hatred for both Blacks and Jews.  He liked to read books as a kid too (Hemingway and Fitzgerald), and was beaten by his father for that inclination.  Is his background of abuse a saving grace for Dougray and his evil wish to see Black kids gunned down by police one after the other, á la Schindler’s List?   Does evil have a saving grace?

There is talk in this play in the school teacherly voice of Louisa Hemphill, that maybe Michael Brown brought it all on himself.  Because there were accusations that he had stolen cigarillos from a neighborhood convenience store shortly before the encounter with Darren Wilson. There was also evidence that Wilson didn’t know he was linked to any such incident when he stopped the two young men and ordered them to get on the sidewalk.  And even if he did know, how does it explain a killing? And what about the convenience store surveillance video, released a few years later that showed Brown not robbing anyone in the store, but rather trading a probable bag of marijuana with store employees for cigarillos?

There are no answers in Until the Flood.  There are only questions. As in how long will these extrajudicial killings go on?  More than 10,000 people (a disproportionate number of them Black and Brown) have been slain by police since Michael Brown’s body fell on the street and lay there in the hot August sun for more than four hours before police saw fit to move it. The numbers are trending up. Last year police homicides (at least 1,232) were the highest in more than a decade and based on current data, could be higher in 2024.

There are no commentators á la MSNBC, CNN or Fox News in Until the Flood to tell us what to think. It is just all laid out there on the stage for us to think about for ourselves in this not-to-be-missed Fleetwood-Jourdain production. 

Until the Flood by Dael Orlandersmith runs Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons through November 10 at the Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes Street, Evanston, IL. Tickets are $30.

The play is directed by FJT artistic director Tim Rhoze and features Jazzma Pryor and Jasmine “Jaz” Robertson. The team also includes Kate Parker-Burrows (costume design); Shane Rogers (technical design); David Goodman-Edberg (lighting design); Rick Sims (sound design) Rich Oliver (stage manager/assistant director) and Bria Walker-Rhoze (artistic associate). 

Photos by Basil Clunie