Woke is described in the dictionary as: ”alert to injustice in society, especially racism”. In Apphia Campbell’s Fringe First-winning production, Woke, she brings this description alive for the audience by using the stories of two black women in the US, 42 years apart. This explores their experiences of living through key periods of history - the 1970s and the 2010s - but experiencing similar challenges. The former looks at Assata Shakur, known for her connection to the Black Panther movement and the Black Liberation Army; the latter centres around a naïve young woman, Ambrosia, at college in St Louis in 2014, not far from the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, which leads to Ambrosia's subsequent embracing of the Black Lives Matter movement. These two characters are clearly drawn as Campbell effortlessly moves from one to the other – as well as the strikingly-captured male voice of Tre, who wakes the naïve Ambrosia.
Interspersed throughout, Campbell sings refrains from Bessie Smith’s songs of protest, as well as gospel and blues music. The songs are powerful and emotive, as Campbell draws us in with the familiar and unfamiliar, the lines that echo so strongly of a time and place that we are transported into the protests, the call to arms.
This is not an easy piece to watch and listen to. Campbell’s two characters are clearly drawn, from Shakur’s search for freedom which led to escaping the US, to Ambrosia’s journey to awareness that the freedom she thought she had did not exist. The ease with which the imbalance between power and the justice system works - from the 70s right up to modern day – is heart-breakingly clear as the stories unfold.
The impact of systemic racism flows through this production. It is rare to be in the audience of a show and for the end to be punctuated for - what feels like a lifetime - not by clapping, but with stunned, overwhelmed silence. Once this lifted, there was a well-deserved standing ovation for Campbell’s flawless, emotionally charged, and thought-provoking, call-to-arms performance.
Woke’s run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is now complete, but the show is available for touring in 2022.
https://www.seabright.org/woke/