‘Dissectations,’ an Individual Ritual of Rage, Uses Disparate Themes to Bond Community

This week black Americans will honor the past year and celebrate the new as they observe Kwanzaa , a festival also known as “black Christmas.” Akilah Nayo Oliver will observe the holiday in a creative and unorthodox manner with her performance piece “Dissectations: Anatomy of a Rage,” opening Thursday at Highways in Santa Monica.

The piece is “about how we internalize and personalize racism,” said Oliver, who has blended a disparate collection of stories, poetry, music, chants and monologue in what she calls a cleansing and healing ritual. “Ritual is very much a part of the African-American culture,” said the writer, whose themes in “Dissectations” include AIDS, incest and rape. “The chance, the movement, the repetition all create a sense of that ritual.”

The material, she says, “speaks from my experience as a woman, an earthling, an African person in America--all those things. A spokesperson for black folks? No, that’s not real. But I think there are definite cultural entities that I’ve gotten from the experience of being a black woman in America. It’s something I’m part of, have learned from, grown out of.”

“Dissectations” grew out of Oliver’s writing--poems and passages and stories, which she composed hoping to blend them into a larger work. “I kept thinking, ‘There must be some way in which this will all relate,’ ” said Oliver, who’s been expanding her writing into performance work in local forums such as Beyond Baroque.

“It’s very personal for me. I wanted to put it on a community level. So it became, ‘We should be talking about these things. Why can’t we?’ ”

The piece has more than one point of view shaping it. In addition to its seven-member cast, poet Michelle T. Clinton has contributed her work, and performance artist Keith Antar Mason is directing. “I don’t think Akilah or Keith would take this label, but I consider myself a radical feminist,” Clinton said.

“Yet a lot of her scenes feed right into my agenda, right into my priorities--which is that you cannot get through this pain unless you admit that it’s going on. I think doing this is going to create a tremendous amount of bonding within the community.”

Clinton shrugged. “Sure, I’d like an audience with black blood, so they can pick up our rhythms and respond to them. But the ideal audience would be racially mixed. That’s something America has to learn: how you interact with other cultures, how you respect them, let them be what they are. There’s also a need for black people to sit down and have a dialogue. But the show is not anti-white. It’s not trying to keep anybody out.”

Oliver, a Los Angeles native and UC Berkeley graduate who works as a substitute sixth-grade teacher in Compton, believes that such cultural and racial negotiations signal the wave of things to come: “I don’t think it’s a question any more of how black people are going to fit into mainstream America--but how America’s going to fit into the diverse cultures that really are America.”

Still, she cannot help but wonder about the community- and self-identity being created for her own 7-year-old son.

“He’s a writer too,” she said proudly. “I think he’ll come into his own as a black man, and as a black woman. That’s certainly interesting to watch. Yet I experience so many black men who are not surviving without struggle. There’s such a precarious nature being a black man in society, the tensions and joys between black men and women. So I’m always thinking about that balance. That’s a lot of what my piece wants to do: facilitate that relationship.”

Given that goal--and the gentle spirit traditionally associated with Kwanzaa --where does the “rage” of Oliver’s show title figure in?

“ Kwanzaa speaks to different virtues and affirmations, like self-determination,” she said. “But where does the self-determination come from? What do we affirm? It is joyous. But we have to work through to it: look at all the things affecting us as people and black folk, then figure out how to begin the healing. So the piece starts from a point of pain--a monologue about incest--and moves from there. We owe it to the audience not to leave them there, but bring them through.”

“Dissectations: Anatomy of Rage,” plays at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Admission is $8. (213) 453-1775.