The XIXth (The Nineteenth)
If you do a Google image search for “Black Power Olympics,” one of the first results is a CNN story with the word “forgotten” in the headline. Astonishing, when you learn how much attention Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ defiant fist-raising gesture on the 200-meter winner’s podium received in the already newsy and turbulent year of 1968. And even if you haven’t forgotten, it’s likely the photo that sticks in memory, as opposed to The Olympic Project for Human Rights it supported or any of that project's specific demands — perhaps most notably, the removal of IOC President “Slavery” Avery Brundage.
Playwright Kemp Powers’ The XIXth’s work is to trace the story of the events that led up to and followed from that much photographed moment: the lives of two athletes who found they could not disentangle sports and politics, before or after. It’s to the play’s credit that it lets Brundage make a compelling case in opposition, arguing that sports are precisely the place where politics can be set aside and people can be as vicariously tribal and warlike as they please — the safety valve of civilization. And also that it avoids any sort of speech-y rebuke of that argument, instead letting the action make the case. But its real achievement lies in its exploration of the struggle between those who were ostensibly on the same side: Smith, who had been running all his life to escape the cotton fields of California; Carlos, who ran both to avoid the authorities and to keep up with his childhood hero Malcolm X; and Jesse Owens, who ran to show Hitler that blacks were as human as anyone, and maybe even superior.
There are no weak spots in the production — save perhaps a gentle elision of the gesture’s connection to the Black Panthers — and there are several standouts, most notably the leads and Riw Rakkulchon’s track-inspired set.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, April 23, 2023
Hours
| Tuesdays, 7pm |