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[energetic electronic music]

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[overlapping chatter]

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— Ok.

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— All right.

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Edgar Arceneaux: Today we're going to 
focus on the end of Scene 3,

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when he's on the floor, the green present
shows up.

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So we'll just start off with the green light.

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"Until, Until, Until" is a performance, which
I'm calling a play,

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that is based on an actual performance
that Ben Vereen did in 1981

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where he decided to do a tribute to vaudevillian performer
Bert Williams

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at the 1981 Republican gala, which was a celebration of
Ronald Reagan's election.

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Man as Vereen: See them shuffle along

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Watch them shuffle along and take your...

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[Edgar Arceneaux] The first act was
like a straight-up minstrel show

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so when he came out on stage,
he was dressed in blackface,

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which is surreal in and of itself,
and did this really moving tribute.

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And then the second part is
where the critique was...

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— He's trying to assert his manhood 
— OK.

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[Edgar Arceneaux] But ABC edited out that second part

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and only showed him doing a
minstrel show for Ronald Reagan

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and, like, you know, 25,000 white Republicans.

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[Man as Vereen] Well, these here, these, my
friends...

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Line?

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[Edgar Arceneaux] And two days later,
Ben was surprised to learn

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that all the people who were
part of his circle

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of friends and supporters,
they all abandoned him.

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[Man as Vereen] That's quite all right.

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I, uh...I just forgets my place… sometimes.

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[Edgar Arceneaux] Now this is the thing.

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Even if America had seen it, I am not convinced

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that most people would have
thought that it was a good idea.

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Heh! That's the reason why I wanted to do
it,

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because of that uncertainty...

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[Man as Vereen] You're marvelous!

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[Edgar Arceneaux] And the power of what art is,

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which is distinctive from other fields,
is its unruliness,

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which ultimately means that...
art is not inherently good.

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It's not inherently bad,
but it is inherently

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contradictory.

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[Man as Vereen] All right, I'll sing it...

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[Edgar Arceneaux] Its nature is to ask new questions.

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[Man as Vereen hums a show tune]

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Arceneaux: You know, L.A. is a complicated
place,

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and it's so big.

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There are still parts of it I've never seen.

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But this route will give you a sense of the
different L.A.s,

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and...how it's broken up

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into these invisible barriers
of class and race, you know?

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It's a very different
experience when you get to see

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the other part of L.A. Where, you know,
where regular people live,

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working-class folks live,

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you know, so where I came from.

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It's just always been... home to me, um, 
but, you know, all of my family's here,

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and I'm a third-generation Angeleno.

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My mother's, like, a really
good storyteller, so, you know,

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she would really bring the past to life.

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On Sundays, like, after
church, she would be in her room,

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you know, like, lying on the
bed, and one of us would go

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in there and lie down and then the other one.

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The next thing you know, like,
all 6 of us would be in there

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on the bed like, "Mom, tell us
some stories about Grandpa,"

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like, "tell us some stories
about your childhood," so...

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I'm named after my grandfather.
Yeah, he was a painter and an inventor,

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and part of the story of my name is that,

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you know, I look like him, I
walk like him, I talk like him,

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but he died a couple months before I was born.

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So I could accredit, probably,
my interest into philosophy

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and religion and science to that anomaly
because I started asking myself early on,

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like, "How could I be him and be myself
at the same time," you know?

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Drawing, for me,
is both a technique, but it's

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also a methodology.

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It's a way of thinking about how
we make connections between things.

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This is a...a big-rig truck
that's crashed into the side of a church.

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This is like a collision of belief systems,
right?

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And when I was in my undergraduate studies
at Art Center, I remember, you know, encountering,

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like, all these car accidents, and it seemed
to bethere

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there was some kind of pattern that existed
to it.

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And then I started to think about it more
philosophically,

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which was, like, you know, "Why is it that
we

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consider car accidents and car crashes to
be random?"

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because randomness is defined by a sense that
we live

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within the logical, reasoned universe.

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I'm constantly trying to figure out how you
could talk about

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big ideas, but through images that are somewhat
familiar.

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So, within the space of making aa body of
work,

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the thing that I'm trying to talk about is
not necessarily in the picture.

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[electric saw whirs]

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— You know, this is just like
making a drawing, you know?

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— Yep.

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— It's all little, tiny detail stuff.

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— No comment.

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[laughs]

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— Maybe we should just make a drawing instead.
— I know. I know, I know.

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[laugs]

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[drilling]

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[Edgar Arceneaux] So "The Library of Black Lies"
is both a library and a labyrinth.

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'cause, you know, like, the difference between
a labyrinth and a maze is that in a maze,

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you're supposed to get lost,

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but in a labyrinth, you find yourself 
in the middle.

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And I still don't know what's in the center
of this one.

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This is one of my early experiments,
thinking about the limitations of what we

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can know,

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that even though the book has
been destroyed in some way,

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like, you can't open it and read it any longer,
it's taken on a new form.

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So I don't know if this is
going to make it in the library or not,

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this particular one, but I am
going to be crystallizing some books,

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and this may be what's in the middle.

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[electric saw whirring]

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But, you know, the other thing
about uncertainty is that it's

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something that you can't ever get rid of.

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Um, as a matter of fact, it's a necessary
product of exploration.

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[saw whirring]

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Ideally, that's where innovation comes from.

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That's where something new comes into the
equation,

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is when you allow for that that uncomfortableness,

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that sense that you don't know.

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[Indistinct chatter]

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In a lot of ways, you know,the "Black Lies"
project is a way

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of examining the library as a means by which
to transform oneself...

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'cause we live in an information age,
so, like, there's information everywhere.

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I mean, that doesn't hasn't radically transformed
society

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in any greater way.

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[Distant, overlapping chatter]

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I wanted to produce some troublesome
juxtapositions

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between knowledge of something that has power

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in itself and knowledge as something
that can be harnessed for political purposes,

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either to suppress or to
transform one's position.

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[Overlapping chatter]

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This idea of the American dream is

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the thing that we're all working towards...

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but at the same time, a lot of people are
recognizing

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that they haven't gone anywhere.

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[Chatter continues]

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[Distant traffic noise]

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The reason why I use mirror is
because I try to use materials

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that have certain properties
that trouble things and...

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this one, it troubles the gaze, you know,
like, you

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there's no neutral place to stand.

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It forces you to contend with the fact
that you are reflected in it somewhere.

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This is a project that's
called "A Book and a Medal."

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By coincidence, I come across these two letters.

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The first one, um, what's known now as the
suicide letter,

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was sent to Martin Luther King in 
December of 1964.

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And essentially, the letter said, 
"We know your secrets,

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and if you don't stop, we're 
going to expose you."

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And then, at the end, it said, "You know,
and you should just kill yourself."

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It turns out that the letter was sent to him
by

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J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

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[Martin Luther King Jr.] A time comes 
when silence is betrayal.

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[Edgar Arceneaux] In the show, what I 
was trying to do was

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to explore the vulnerabilities

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of a person who's in a position of leadership.

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[Martin Luther King Jr.] ...beyond doubt, but the mission to
which they call us...

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[Edgar Arceneaux] Martin Luther King 
as a historical subject

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has been monumentalized.

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He's been turned into a kind of a superhero.

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[Martin Luther King Jr.] I cannot be silent in the face of such
cruel manipulation of the poor.

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My third reason moves to an even deeper level
of awareness, for it grows...

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[Edgar Arceneaux] In a lot of ways, I mean, the project
of democracy

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as a true possibility is really predicated
on how the United States deals

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with its legacy of genocide and slavery.

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So I didn't want to produce a situation in
the show where

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you felt like this was done…

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because this
is still ongoing.

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Um, as a matter of fact, it could be unresolvable,

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and I think, to some degree, some people may
be thinking

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that this might be as good as it gets,

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so, like, the "I Have a Dream" speech, 
where "I may not get to

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the mountaintop with you" is a metaphor,

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I wanted to put that on a table
and say, "Let's let's analyze this."

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Will we get any better than this?

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And for me, I'm not sure.

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30 years ago, a man did a performance
that was meant to challenge the status quo,

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and it irreparably damaged his life in the
process.

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He was willing to go on this journey with
us to bring this piece back into the public

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in the way it was meant to be seen.

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Let's make a great show.

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[clapping]

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[Patriotic music playing]

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Arceneaux: I have to be quite honest.

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I never imagined that I would ever do anything
with blackface.

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[Chuckles]

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It's not a subject I have any interest in,

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but yet here I am.

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[Vaudeville music playing]

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[Recorded applause and
cheering]

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If you've seen the video of Ben Vereen
at Ronald Reagan's presidential gala,

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it's one of the most surreal things that I've
seen,

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and it's haunted me for 20 years.

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[Vaudeville music playing]

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We were on the phone yesterday.

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And it was actually it was really, really moving.

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I was sort of brought to tears during the call.

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Ben said, "Listen, you know,
"you have to do this piece your way,

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"and so take this material and run with it.
You know, it's yours now."

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[Actor as Ben Vereen] I just forgets my place… sometimes.

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[Edgar Arceneaux] So I'm even getting choked up
right now just thinking about it,

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but, you know, it's...
if that happened to me,

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that kind of betrayal and humiliation,
you would hope

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that there would be somebody out there
who would want to kind of pick up that mantle.

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[Singing indistinctly]

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And I could sense from him that,
independent

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of if the piece is great or not, he knows
that there's

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people out there that care now, you know,
that what he tried

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to do 30 years ago, this may be that time.

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Maybe now is that time.

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[Applause]

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[Vaudeville music playing]

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[music fades out]

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[soft electronic music]