STAGE REVIEW : ‘Stories’ Needs Help

Rhodessa Jones is black and blue. In her latest performance piece, “Blue Stories: Black Erotica About Letting Go” at Sushi Performance and Visual Art, she chronicles the pain that shaped her (part of her definition of “erotica”), and recounts her seminal life experiences in the speculative-retrospective context of “If I died tonight . . . “ (her conception of “letting go”).

This world premiere is the third in her series of autobiographical works. Compared to last year’s successful “Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women,” this work is more self-absorbed and less ready-for-prime-time. Juxtaposed with that polished and professional piece, which Jones performed in two separate runs at Sushi, this one seems unfinished, amateurish, and more geared to an intimate family affair than a public presentation.

It highlights both the primary strength of the performer and the primary weakness of performance art. A creative and charismatic storyteller, Jones is at her best when she takes on other characters and personas. Her singing, dancing, narrating and pontificating are far less convincing than her characterization, impersonation and pure acting. When she stands before us examining her family photographs, saying “Thank you” and “I love you” to the important people in her life, she sinks to the lowest navel-examining level of performance art.

The problem is, this piece hasn’t yet taken a definitive shape. Jones has a lot to say, especially about the role of women--black women, all women--in our society. When she turned the mirror outward on the prison inmates of “Big Butt Girls,” what she said and did was riveting.

In “Blue Stories,” her most compelling moments are ones that are both personal and universal: her brother’s casual, callous awareness of her budding sexuality; her youthful submission to men’s seductions that left her abused and pregnant. But she appears to be not quite sure what she wants to convey, or what form and direction the piece should take. She moves in and out of the theatrical “fourth wall,” unnervingly stepping out and asking the audience a question midway through the 70-minute performance.

She assumes that everyone knows a good deal about her brother, choreographer Bill T. Jones, and his long-term collaboration-connection with Arnie Zane, who died of AIDS. She says too little about her relationship with her brothers and sisters, with her Mama and Big Mama. We learn more about what she thinks than what she feels.

At the outset, she’s sitting at a desk, writing her remembrances. (“Is memory something you had or something you lost?” she muses). Then she gets into a kind of dream state, a highly introspective reverie about her past that shuts us out rather than draws us in. She ends, as before, with invocations to the audience, with stand-up-and-repeat-after-me affirmations such as “I will grow wisely,” “I will learn myself,” “I will love myself.” She is trying to heal her audience, but only she seems to be purged.

With the help of director Idris Ackamoor, she should reshape and refine the piece, saving the fascinating characters and stories and saving us from the excessive self-observation. The part about her father and his Georgia cronies putting on camouflage face-paint and breaking up lynching parties is fabulous. Likewise the enactment of her birth and the tales about her feisty grandpa and her trickster grandma.

But she can eliminate some of the overwrought dances and the platitudes about love and death.

Some of the creative and technical work is very strong and should be retained. The backdrop scrolls unfurl as seasons of a life, with their provocative African-Indian-primitive paintings by Lorraine Capparell. The lighting design by Suanne Pauley is fine, but the varied musical background by Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles and original pieces by director Ackamoor would work better if the quality of the recordings were improved. The choreography could be more unpredictable, the costume more flattering.

Jones has the moves and the message, she has moments of honest vitality and combustible energy. But sometimes she tells too much and sometimes she leaves the audience in the dark. She needs to rely more on her instinctual self than her analytical self. That would truly be letting go.

“BLUE STORIES: BLACK EROTICA ABOUT LETTING GO”

Conceived, written and performed by Rhodessa Jones. Directed by Idris Ackamoor. Design by Lars Speyer. Paintings by Lorraine Capparell. Lighting by Suanne Pauley. Music by Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, Idris Ackamoor, Eva Demarychk, Flo Brown. Tickets are $12. Performances are at 8 p.m. tonight, with a special benefit performance at 10 p.m. At Sushi Performance and Visual Art. Call 235-8466.