Students transform the love of power through performance art

Students enrolled in CMLT-C301, a special topics course in the Department of Comparative Literature, were presented with the theme, “The Vanity of Power” on the first day of class. They are in the finishing stages of preparing their final performance, which will be at 8:00 p.m. Saturday in the IU School of Fine Arts Gallery.

“Two and One Thousand Voiced Fragments,” a play written and directed by Senegalese filmmaker Joseph Gai Ramaka, will be performed by the class in an elaborate display of the arts, combining music, painting, theater and Capoeira dance from Iuri Santos, who manages local Capoeira Angola group, Estrela do Norte.

This combined session of comparative literature and African and African American Diaspora provides students the opportunity to analyze, interpret and perform the play.

The opening scene of the play shows the main character Yatta, played by junior Ariana Scoggins,struggling to cope with her decision to choose between power and the one thing she truly loved. 

“Theater is not the opposite of reality,” Ramaka said, adding that this musical tragedy addresses a commonality of the resonance of power confined in the conscience of men and women.

Jean Henry, the course’s associate instructor said the play crosses the line of simplicity and complexity.

Ramaka identifies how political regimes have abused and manipulated the privilege of power within the script.

Conflict arises when Yatta and her deceased lover, Fit revisits her in memory and in spirit while she is still grieving his loss.

Suspicious of even her own decision, Yatta soon realized just what she had done; unfortunately, it was already too late.

Yatta, however, was unprepared for King Jaxxay’s unruly, arrogant and demanding behavior once the survivors of the JOM Republic storm toward the palace to reclaim their sovereignty and dignity. Jaxxayceases to notice his power beginning to weaken.

In terms of what the course offered, junior Ryan Hedge, who plays Jaxxay, said he found the class to be the “most interesting course he has taken at IU.”

“It turned me into an actor although I have no acting experience,” he said, commenting on his overall involvement in the play.