WEBVTT 00:00:08.889 --> 00:00:19.784 [energetic electronic music] 00:00:21.504 --> 00:00:24.664 [overlapping chatter] 00:00:26.092 --> 00:00:27.278 — Ok. 00:00:27.636 --> 00:00:28.752 — All right. 00:00:32.735 --> 00:00:36.510 Edgar Arceneaux: Today we're going to focus on the end of Scene 3, 00:00:36.510 --> 00:00:39.930 when he's on the floor, the green present shows up. 00:00:39.930 --> 00:00:42.540 So we'll just start off with the green light. 00:00:43.113 --> 00:00:50.701 "Until, Until, Until" is a performance, which I'm calling a play, 00:00:51.028 --> 00:00:57.370 that is based on an actual performance that Ben Vereen did in 1981 00:00:57.370 --> 00:01:04.392 where he decided to do a tribute to vaudevillian performer Bert Williams 00:01:04.392 --> 00:01:12.214 at the 1981 Republican gala, which was a celebration of Ronald Reagan's election. 00:01:13.384 --> 00:01:15.770 Man as Vereen: See them shuffle along 00:01:16.511 --> 00:01:20.222 Watch them shuffle along and take your... 00:01:20.222 --> 00:01:23.412 [Edgar Arceneaux] The first act was like a straight-up minstrel show 00:01:23.723 --> 00:01:26.460 so when he came out on stage, he was dressed in blackface, 00:01:26.460 --> 00:01:32.991 which is surreal in and of itself, and did this really moving tribute. 00:01:33.779 --> 00:01:37.399 And then the second part is where the critique was... 00:01:37.399 --> 00:01:41.200 — He's trying to assert his manhood — OK. 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:44.049 [Edgar Arceneaux] But ABC edited out that second part 00:01:44.049 --> 00:01:47.620 and only showed him doing a minstrel show for Ronald Reagan 00:01:47.620 --> 00:01:50.440 and, like, you know, 25,000 white Republicans. 00:01:50.440 --> 00:01:55.050 [Man as Vereen] Well, these here, these, my friends... 00:01:55.050 --> 00:01:56.050 Line? 00:01:56.050 --> 00:01:59.460 [Edgar Arceneaux] And two days later, Ben was surprised to learn 00:01:59.460 --> 00:02:01.909 that all the people who were part of his circle 00:02:01.909 --> 00:02:04.390 of friends and supporters, they all abandoned him. 00:02:04.390 --> 00:02:07.119 [Man as Vereen] That's quite all right. 00:02:07.119 --> 00:02:14.902 I, uh...I just forgets my place… sometimes. 00:02:16.216 --> 00:02:18.180 [Edgar Arceneaux] Now this is the thing. 00:02:18.180 --> 00:02:22.620 Even if America had seen it, I am not convinced 00:02:22.620 --> 00:02:25.475 that most people would have thought that it was a good idea. 00:02:25.690 --> 00:02:28.559 Heh! That's the reason why I wanted to do it, 00:02:29.587 --> 00:02:31.909 because of that uncertainty... 00:02:31.909 --> 00:02:33.410 [Man as Vereen] You're marvelous! 00:02:33.410 --> 00:02:37.317 [Edgar Arceneaux] And the power of what art is, 00:02:37.317 --> 00:02:44.179 which is distinctive from other fields, is its unruliness, 00:02:44.734 --> 00:02:51.973 which ultimately means that... art is not inherently good. 00:02:52.690 --> 00:02:56.000 It's not inherently bad, but it is inherently 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:57.406 contradictory. 00:02:57.406 --> 00:02:58.983 [Man as Vereen] All right, I'll sing it... 00:02:58.983 --> 00:03:01.006 [Edgar Arceneaux] Its nature is to ask new questions. 00:03:01.006 --> 00:03:05.496 [Man as Vereen hums a show tune] 00:03:18.526 --> 00:03:20.642 Arceneaux: You know, L.A. is a complicated place, 00:03:20.642 --> 00:03:22.032 and it's so big. 00:03:22.032 --> 00:03:24.528 There are still parts of it I've never seen. 00:03:27.395 --> 00:03:30.750 But this route will give you a sense of the different L.A.s, 00:03:32.470 --> 00:03:33.629 and...how it's broken up 00:03:33.629 --> 00:03:38.261 into these invisible barriers of class and race, you know? 00:03:39.599 --> 00:03:42.530 It's a very different experience when you get to see 00:03:42.530 --> 00:03:47.230 the other part of L.A. Where, you know, where regular people live, 00:03:47.230 --> 00:03:48.330 working-class folks live, 00:03:49.023 --> 00:03:52.095 you know, so where I came from. 00:03:55.535 --> 00:04:01.950 It's just always been... home to me, um, but, you know, all of my family's here, 00:04:01.950 --> 00:04:05.069 and I'm a third-generation Angeleno. 00:04:08.222 --> 00:04:11.310 My mother's, like, a really good storyteller, so, you know, 00:04:11.310 --> 00:04:13.439 she would really bring the past to life. 00:04:14.036 --> 00:04:16.940 On Sundays, like, after church, she would be in her room, 00:04:16.940 --> 00:04:19.979 you know, like, lying on the bed, and one of us would go 00:04:19.979 --> 00:04:22.120 in there and lie down and then the other one. 00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:23.972 The next thing you know, like, all 6 of us would be in there 00:04:23.972 --> 00:04:26.337 on the bed like, "Mom, tell us some stories about Grandpa," 00:04:26.337 --> 00:04:28.634 like, "tell us some stories about your childhood," so... 00:04:29.470 --> 00:04:34.820 I'm named after my grandfather. Yeah, he was a painter and an inventor, 00:04:35.871 --> 00:04:38.690 and part of the story of my name is that, 00:04:38.690 --> 00:04:42.640 you know, I look like him, I walk like him, I talk like him, 00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:45.180 but he died a couple months before I was born. 00:04:48.429 --> 00:04:53.565 So I could accredit, probably, my interest into philosophy 00:04:53.565 --> 00:04:59.940 and religion and science to that anomaly because I started asking myself early on, 00:04:59.940 --> 00:05:04.371 like, "How could I be him and be myself at the same time," you know? 00:05:09.718 --> 00:05:14.890 Drawing, for me, is both a technique, but it's 00:05:14.890 --> 00:05:16.880 also a methodology. 00:05:16.880 --> 00:05:24.055 It's a way of thinking about how we make connections between things. 00:05:24.819 --> 00:05:30.956 This is a...a big-rig truck that's crashed into the side of a church. 00:05:31.099 --> 00:05:34.301 This is like a collision of belief systems, right? 00:05:35.187 --> 00:05:40.860 And when I was in my undergraduate studies at Art Center, I remember, you know, encountering, 00:05:40.860 --> 00:05:43.620 like, all these car accidents, and it seemed to bethere 00:05:43.620 --> 00:05:46.486 there was some kind of pattern that existed to it. 00:05:47.134 --> 00:05:49.563 And then I started to think about it more philosophically, 00:05:49.563 --> 00:05:51.310 which was, like, you know, "Why is it that we 00:05:51.310 --> 00:05:56.766 consider car accidents and car crashes to be random?" 00:05:57.077 --> 00:06:00.380 because randomness is defined by a sense that we live 00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:04.230 within the logical, reasoned universe. 00:06:05.472 --> 00:06:08.099 I'm constantly trying to figure out how you could talk about 00:06:08.099 --> 00:06:13.309 big ideas, but through images that are somewhat familiar. 00:06:15.531 --> 00:06:20.720 So, within the space of making aa body of work, 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:25.364 the thing that I'm trying to talk about is not necessarily in the picture. 00:06:27.182 --> 00:06:30.696 [electric saw whirs] 00:06:32.029 --> 00:06:34.710 — You know, this is just like making a drawing, you know? 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:35.710 — Yep. 00:06:35.710 --> 00:06:38.440 — It's all little, tiny detail stuff. 00:06:39.401 --> 00:06:40.741 — No comment. 00:06:40.741 --> 00:06:42.205 [laughs] 00:06:42.635 --> 00:06:46.623 — Maybe we should just make a drawing instead. — I know. I know, I know. 00:06:46.623 --> 00:06:47.787 [laugs] 00:06:47.787 --> 00:06:49.680 [drilling] 00:06:50.182 --> 00:06:54.390 [Edgar Arceneaux] So "The Library of Black Lies" is both a library and a labyrinth. 00:06:56.253 --> 00:07:00.099 'cause, you know, like, the difference between a labyrinth and a maze is that in a maze, 00:07:00.099 --> 00:07:02.260 you're supposed to get lost, 00:07:02.260 --> 00:07:05.340 but in a labyrinth, you find yourself in the middle. 00:07:06.630 --> 00:07:09.424 And I still don't know what's in the center of this one. 00:07:11.048 --> 00:07:15.870 This is one of my early experiments, thinking about the limitations of what we 00:07:15.870 --> 00:07:17.610 can know, 00:07:17.610 --> 00:07:20.919 that even though the book has been destroyed in some way, 00:07:20.919 --> 00:07:26.225 like, you can't open it and read it any longer, it's taken on a new form. 00:07:26.488 --> 00:07:28.920 So I don't know if this is going to make it in the library or not, 00:07:28.920 --> 00:07:33.137 this particular one, but I am going to be crystallizing some books, 00:07:33.137 --> 00:07:35.889 and this may be what's in the middle. 00:07:35.889 --> 00:07:38.683 [electric saw whirring] 00:07:38.683 --> 00:07:41.050 But, you know, the other thing about uncertainty is that it's 00:07:41.050 --> 00:07:44.420 something that you can't ever get rid of. 00:07:44.683 --> 00:07:49.838 Um, as a matter of fact, it's a necessary product of exploration. 00:07:49.838 --> 00:07:51.838 [saw whirring] 00:07:52.036 --> 00:07:54.009 Ideally, that's where innovation comes from. 00:07:54.009 --> 00:07:57.250 That's where something new comes into the equation, 00:07:57.250 --> 00:08:01.879 is when you allow for that that uncomfortableness, 00:08:01.879 --> 00:08:03.818 that sense that you don't know. 00:08:16.830 --> 00:08:18.424 [Indistinct chatter] 00:08:18.424 --> 00:08:20.699 In a lot of ways, you know,the "Black Lies" project is a way 00:08:20.699 --> 00:08:25.659 of examining the library as a means by which to transform oneself... 00:08:33.470 --> 00:08:36.219 'cause we live in an information age, so, like, there's information everywhere. 00:08:36.983 --> 00:08:39.260 I mean, that doesn't hasn't radically transformed society 00:08:39.260 --> 00:08:41.334 in any greater way. 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:49.363 [Distant, overlapping chatter] 00:08:57.785 --> 00:09:01.570 I wanted to produce some troublesome juxtapositions 00:09:01.570 --> 00:09:04.720 between knowledge of something that has power 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:12.690 in itself and knowledge as something that can be harnessed for political purposes, 00:09:12.690 --> 00:09:17.101 either to suppress or to transform one's position. 00:09:17.889 --> 00:09:20.788 [Overlapping chatter] 00:09:21.808 --> 00:09:24.380 This idea of the American dream is 00:09:24.380 --> 00:09:27.034 the thing that we're all working towards... 00:09:28.135 --> 00:09:31.390 but at the same time, a lot of people are recognizing 00:09:31.390 --> 00:09:33.256 that they haven't gone anywhere. 00:09:33.256 --> 00:09:34.759 [Chatter continues] 00:09:43.550 --> 00:09:49.602 [Distant traffic noise] 00:09:53.111 --> 00:09:56.830 The reason why I use mirror is because I try to use materials 00:09:56.830 --> 00:10:01.899 that have certain properties that trouble things and... 00:10:01.899 --> 00:10:04.250 this one, it troubles the gaze, you know, like, you 00:10:04.250 --> 00:10:07.042 there's no neutral place to stand. 00:10:07.401 --> 00:10:12.122 It forces you to contend with the fact that you are reflected in it somewhere. 00:10:13.866 --> 00:10:17.342 This is a project that's called "A Book and a Medal." 00:10:18.067 --> 00:10:21.230 By coincidence, I come across these two letters. 00:10:21.230 --> 00:10:24.340 The first one, um, what's known now as the suicide letter, 00:10:24.340 --> 00:10:28.292 was sent to Martin Luther King in December of 1964. 00:10:28.292 --> 00:10:31.960 And essentially, the letter said, "We know your secrets, 00:10:31.960 --> 00:10:34.430 and if you don't stop, we're going to expose you." 00:10:34.430 --> 00:10:38.693 And then, at the end, it said, "You know, and you should just kill yourself." 00:10:40.532 --> 00:10:43.200 It turns out that the letter was sent to him by 00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:45.050 J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. 00:10:46.221 --> 00:10:50.480 [Martin Luther King Jr.] A time comes when silence is betrayal. 00:10:51.101 --> 00:10:53.579 [Edgar Arceneaux] In the show, what I was trying to do was 00:10:53.579 --> 00:10:57.279 to explore the vulnerabilities 00:10:57.279 --> 00:10:59.860 of a person who's in a position of leadership. 00:11:00.101 --> 00:11:04.720 [Martin Luther King Jr.] ...beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us... 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:07.510 [Edgar Arceneaux] Martin Luther King as a historical subject 00:11:07.510 --> 00:11:09.720 has been monumentalized. 00:11:09.720 --> 00:11:11.985 He's been turned into a kind of a superhero. 00:11:11.985 --> 00:11:17.364 [Martin Luther King Jr.] I cannot be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:23.584 My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows... 00:11:23.584 --> 00:11:27.920 [Edgar Arceneaux] In a lot of ways, I mean, the project of democracy 00:11:27.920 --> 00:11:34.100 as a true possibility is really predicated on how the United States deals 00:11:34.100 --> 00:11:37.756 with its legacy of genocide and slavery. 00:11:38.568 --> 00:11:40.839 So I didn't want to produce a situation in the show where 00:11:40.839 --> 00:11:42.764 you felt like this was done… 00:11:44.556 --> 00:11:47.340 because this is still ongoing. 00:11:47.985 --> 00:11:51.617 Um, as a matter of fact, it could be unresolvable, 00:11:53.050 --> 00:11:56.160 and I think, to some degree, some people may be thinking 00:11:56.160 --> 00:11:58.357 that this might be as good as it gets, 00:11:59.504 --> 00:12:01.790 so, like, the "I Have a Dream" speech, where "I may not get to 00:12:01.790 --> 00:12:04.462 the mountaintop with you" is a metaphor, 00:12:05.250 --> 00:12:09.845 I wanted to put that on a table and say, "Let's let's analyze this." 00:12:11.589 --> 00:12:14.532 Will we get any better than this? 00:12:14.532 --> 00:12:17.111 And for me, I'm not sure. 00:12:21.172 --> 00:12:26.305 30 years ago, a man did a performance that was meant to challenge the status quo, 00:12:26.305 --> 00:12:30.977 and it irreparably damaged his life in the process. 00:12:31.670 --> 00:12:37.269 He was willing to go on this journey with us to bring this piece back into the public 00:12:37.269 --> 00:12:39.480 in the way it was meant to be seen. 00:12:39.695 --> 00:12:41.455 Let's make a great show. 00:12:41.455 --> 00:12:45.112 [clapping] 00:12:45.112 --> 00:12:49.028 [Patriotic music playing] 00:12:49.028 --> 00:12:50.000 Arceneaux: I have to be quite honest. 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:53.363 I never imagined that I would ever do anything with blackface. 00:12:53.363 --> 00:12:54.415 [Chuckles] 00:12:54.415 --> 00:12:56.962 It's not a subject I have any interest in, 00:12:57.468 --> 00:12:59.234 but yet here I am. 00:13:02.866 --> 00:13:06.828 [Vaudeville music playing] 00:13:06.828 --> 00:13:09.575 [Recorded applause and cheering] 00:13:09.575 --> 00:13:16.070 If you've seen the video of Ben Vereen at Ronald Reagan's presidential gala, 00:13:16.500 --> 00:13:20.220 it's one of the most surreal things that I've seen, 00:13:21.510 --> 00:13:24.170 and it's haunted me for 20 years. 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:27.000 [Vaudeville music playing] 00:13:28.541 --> 00:13:30.194 We were on the phone yesterday. 00:13:30.194 --> 00:13:31.759 And it was actually it was really, really moving. 00:13:31.759 --> 00:13:34.325 I was sort of brought to tears during the call. 00:13:35.376 --> 00:13:39.570 Ben said, "Listen, you know, "you have to do this piece your way, 00:13:39.570 --> 00:13:44.700 "and so take this material and run with it. You know, it's yours now." 00:13:45.154 --> 00:13:51.994 [Actor as Ben Vereen] I just forgets my place… sometimes. 00:13:53.356 --> 00:13:55.564 [Edgar Arceneaux] So I'm even getting choked up right now just thinking about it, 00:13:55.564 --> 00:14:00.341 but, you know, it's... if that happened to me, 00:14:01.559 --> 00:14:06.269 that kind of betrayal and humiliation, you would hope 00:14:06.269 --> 00:14:12.515 that there would be somebody out there who would want to kind of pick up that mantle. 00:14:12.682 --> 00:14:18.074 [Singing indistinctly] 00:14:25.988 --> 00:14:29.500 And I could sense from him that, independent 00:14:29.500 --> 00:14:33.220 of if the piece is great or not, he knows that there's 00:14:33.220 --> 00:14:38.130 people out there that care now, you know, that what he tried 00:14:38.130 --> 00:14:42.000 to do 30 years ago, this may be that time. 00:14:43.242 --> 00:14:45.755 Maybe now is that time. 00:14:46.854 --> 00:14:49.260 [Applause] 00:14:49.260 --> 00:14:52.861 [Vaudeville music playing] 00:14:56.898 --> 00:15:00.000 [music fades out] 00:15:02.875 --> 00:15:10.285 [soft electronic music]