[energetic electronic music]
[overlapping chatter]
— Ok.
— All right.
Edgar Arceneaux: Today we're going to focus on the end of Scene 3,
when he's on the floor, the green present shows up.
So we'll just start off with the green light.
"Until, Until, Until" is a performance, which I'm calling a play,
that is based on an actual performance that Ben Vereen did in 1981
where he decided to do a tribute to vaudevillian performer Bert Williams
at the 1981 Republican gala, which was a celebration of Ronald Reagan's election.
Man as Vereen: See them shuffle along
Watch them shuffle along and take your...
[Edgar Arceneaux] The first act was like a straight-up minstrel show
so when he came out on stage, he was dressed in blackface,
which is surreal in and of itself, and did this really moving tribute.
And then the second part is where the critique was...
— He's trying to assert his manhood — OK.
[Edgar Arceneaux] But ABC edited out that second part
and only showed him doing a minstrel show for Ronald Reagan
and, like, you know, 25,000 white Republicans.
[Man as Vereen] Well, these here, these, my friends...
Line?
[Edgar Arceneaux] And two days later, Ben was surprised to learn
that all the people who were part of his circle
of friends and supporters, they all abandoned him.
[Man as Vereen] That's quite all right.
I, uh...I just forgets my place… sometimes.
[Edgar Arceneaux] Now this is the thing.
Even if America had seen it, I am not convinced
that most people would have thought that it was a good idea.
Heh! That's the reason why I wanted to do it,
because of that uncertainty...
[Man as Vereen] You're marvelous!
[Edgar Arceneaux] And the power of what art is,
which is distinctive from other fields, is its unruliness,
which ultimately means that... art is not inherently good.
It's not inherently bad, but it is inherently
contradictory.
[Man as Vereen] All right, I'll sing it...
[Edgar Arceneaux] Its nature is to ask new questions.
[Man as Vereen hums a show tune]
Arceneaux: You know, L.A. is a complicated place,
and it's so big.
There are still parts of it I've never seen.
But this route will give you a sense of the different L.A.s,
and...how it's broken up
into these invisible barriers of class and race, you know?
It's a very different experience when you get to see
the other part of L.A. Where, you know, where regular people live,
working-class folks live,
you know, so where I came from.
It's just always been... home to me, um, but, you know, all of my family's here,
and I'm a third-generation Angeleno.
My mother's, like, a really good storyteller, so, you know,
she would really bring the past to life.
On Sundays, like, after church, she would be in her room,
you know, like, lying on the bed, and one of us would go
in there and lie down and then the other one.
The next thing you know, like, all 6 of us would be in there
on the bed like, "Mom, tell us some stories about Grandpa,"
like, "tell us some stories about your childhood," so...
I'm named after my grandfather. Yeah, he was a painter and an inventor,
and part of the story of my name is that,
you know, I look like him, I walk like him, I talk like him,
but he died a couple months before I was born.
So I could accredit, probably, my interest into philosophy
and religion and science to that anomaly because I started asking myself early on,
like, "How could I be him and be myself at the same time," you know?
Drawing, for me, is both a technique, but it's
also a methodology.
It's a way of thinking about how we make connections between things.
This is a...a big-rig truck that's crashed into the side of a church.
This is like a collision of belief systems, right?
And when I was in my undergraduate studies at Art Center, I remember, you know, encountering,
like, all these car accidents, and it seemed to bethere
there was some kind of pattern that existed to it.
And then I started to think about it more philosophically,
which was, like, you know, "Why is it that we
consider car accidents and car crashes to be random?"
because randomness is defined by a sense that we live
within the logical, reasoned universe.
I'm constantly trying to figure out how you could talk about
big ideas, but through images that are somewhat familiar.
So, within the space of making aa body of work,
the thing that I'm trying to talk about is not necessarily in the picture.
[electric saw whirs]
— You know, this is just like making a drawing, you know?
— Yep.
— It's all little, tiny detail stuff.
— No comment.
[laughs]
— Maybe we should just make a drawing instead. — I know. I know, I know.
[laugs]
[drilling]
[Edgar Arceneaux] So "The Library of Black Lies" is both a library and a labyrinth.
'cause, you know, like, the difference between a labyrinth and a maze is that in a maze,
you're supposed to get lost,
but in a labyrinth, you find yourself in the middle.
And I still don't know what's in the center of this one.
This is one of my early experiments, thinking about the limitations of what we
can know,
that even though the book has been destroyed in some way,
like, you can't open it and read it any longer, it's taken on a new form.
So I don't know if this is going to make it in the library or not,
this particular one, but I am going to be crystallizing some books,
and this may be what's in the middle.
[electric saw whirring]
But, you know, the other thing about uncertainty is that it's
something that you can't ever get rid of.
Um, as a matter of fact, it's a necessary product of exploration.
[saw whirring]
Ideally, that's where innovation comes from.
That's where something new comes into the equation,
is when you allow for that that uncomfortableness,
that sense that you don't know.
[Indistinct chatter]
In a lot of ways, you know,the "Black Lies" project is a way
of examining the library as a means by which to transform oneself...
'cause we live in an information age, so, like, there's information everywhere.
I mean, that doesn't hasn't radically transformed society
in any greater way.
[Distant, overlapping chatter]
I wanted to produce some troublesome juxtapositions
between knowledge of something that has power
in itself and knowledge as something that can be harnessed for political purposes,
either to suppress or to transform one's position.
[Overlapping chatter]
This idea of the American dream is
the thing that we're all working towards...
but at the same time, a lot of people are recognizing
that they haven't gone anywhere.
[Chatter continues]
[Distant traffic noise]
The reason why I use mirror is because I try to use materials
that have certain properties that trouble things and...
this one, it troubles the gaze, you know, like, you
there's no neutral place to stand.
It forces you to contend with the fact that you are reflected in it somewhere.
This is a project that's called "A Book and a Medal."
By coincidence, I come across these two letters.
The first one, um, what's known now as the suicide letter,
was sent to Martin Luther King in December of 1964.
And essentially, the letter said, "We know your secrets,
and if you don't stop, we're going to expose you."
And then, at the end, it said, "You know, and you should just kill yourself."
It turns out that the letter was sent to him by
J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
[Martin Luther King Jr.] A time comes when silence is betrayal.
[Edgar Arceneaux] In the show, what I was trying to do was
to explore the vulnerabilities
of a person who's in a position of leadership.
[Martin Luther King Jr.] ...beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us...
[Edgar Arceneaux] Martin Luther King as a historical subject
has been monumentalized.
He's been turned into a kind of a superhero.
[Martin Luther King Jr.] I cannot be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows...
[Edgar Arceneaux] In a lot of ways, I mean, the project of democracy
as a true possibility is really predicated on how the United States deals
with its legacy of genocide and slavery.
So I didn't want to produce a situation in the show where
you felt like this was done…
because this is still ongoing.
Um, as a matter of fact, it could be unresolvable,
and I think, to some degree, some people may be thinking
that this might be as good as it gets,
so, like, the "I Have a Dream" speech, where "I may not get to
the mountaintop with you" is a metaphor,
I wanted to put that on a table and say, "Let's let's analyze this."
Will we get any better than this?
And for me, I'm not sure.
30 years ago, a man did a performance that was meant to challenge the status quo,
and it irreparably damaged his life in the process.
He was willing to go on this journey with us to bring this piece back into the public
in the way it was meant to be seen.
Let's make a great show.
[clapping]
[Patriotic music playing]
Arceneaux: I have to be quite honest.
I never imagined that I would ever do anything with blackface.
[Chuckles]
It's not a subject I have any interest in,
but yet here I am.
[Vaudeville music playing]
[Recorded applause and cheering]
If you've seen the video of Ben Vereen at Ronald Reagan's presidential gala,
it's one of the most surreal things that I've seen,
and it's haunted me for 20 years.
[Vaudeville music playing]
We were on the phone yesterday.
And it was actually it was really, really moving.
I was sort of brought to tears during the call.
Ben said, "Listen, you know, "you have to do this piece your way,
"and so take this material and run with it. You know, it's yours now."
[Actor as Ben Vereen] I just forgets my place… sometimes.
[Edgar Arceneaux] So I'm even getting choked up right now just thinking about it,
but, you know, it's... if that happened to me,
that kind of betrayal and humiliation, you would hope
that there would be somebody out there who would want to kind of pick up that mantle.
[Singing indistinctly]
And I could sense from him that, independent
of if the piece is great or not, he knows that there's
people out there that care now, you know, that what he tried
to do 30 years ago, this may be that time.
Maybe now is that time.
[Applause]
[Vaudeville music playing]
[music fades out]
[soft electronic music]