Off-Broadway Recommendation: MECCA IS BURNING (Negro Ensemble Company)

A composite play by four playwrights, Mecca Is Burning — which closes Sunday at the Harlem School of the Arts — confronts social and racial themes through the use of protest poetry, dialogue and monologues examining our current social climate from the perspective of four fictional Harlem families. The work was collaboratively written by Cris Eli Blak, Lisa McCree, Levy Lee Simon and Mona R. Washington under the leadership of Karen Brown, Artistic Director and Executive Producer of Negro Ensemble Company, who directs the piece.

The play opens with a character named Marcus (Benjamin Rowe) lamenting the cultural loss of his childhood neighborhood. It then visits four families who might exemplify the region’s impending upheavals.

The title suggests how Harlem, once considered the Mecca for Black Americans, is moving further and further away from its roots as a cauldron of Black culture. In the play, four Black families who inhabit a brownstone in Harlem variously face up to a crisis that could be imagined from the Trump-drugged, factional politics we are living with today. It mixes live music, dance, civil rights era poetry, and contemporary prose, taking inspiration from Ntozake Shange’s acclaimed “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf.” The piece aims to illuminate the fragile perspective of contemporary African Americans: a population battered by gentrification, the retraction of equality and human rights, cultural suppression and the actual possibility of civil war with far-right extremists.

Candace (Joy Renee LeBlanc) and Marcus (Benjamin Rowe).

In “From Rage and Reason,” the section by Levy Lee Simon, Candace and Marcus are both professionals. Marcus discovers that his wife is a militant and he didn’t know it.

Kenya Wilson and Alton Ray.

In “Down to the White Meat,” the section by Lisa McCree, a couple is at odds in their responses to impending violence. Dee’ Ja-Ray wants to move back to Connecticut, where she grew up, but A’Brian insists on staying in Harlem because it’s the world he knows.

Reginald L. Barnes and Tatiana Perry.

In “Papa Goes Away, Papas Never Stay,” the section by Chris Eli Blak, Henry is an everyman laborer and Domenica is his college-bound daughter. As a civil war in Harlem is breaking out between white supremacists and local Black residents, Henry intends to fight for the first time in his life. He had never before challenged the system to gain respect as a Black man. Domenica fears she’ll have nothing if he dies.

Ashlee Danielle and Sharell Williams.

“Queen Shea,” the section by Mona R Washington, is quirky comic relief. Kyla and Alicia, sisters, are frozen with inaction as they, like many, try to flee the Cracker insurrection but are tripped up by petty domestic complications like college schedules and packing hair products.

photos by Jonathan Slaff

August 10-20, 2023
Harlem School of the Arts, 645 St. Nicholas Ave.
Presented by The Negro Ensemble Company, Inc.
Co-commissioned by Penn Live Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.
Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8:00 PM;
matinees Saturdays at 2:00 PM & Sundays at 3:00 PM.
Tickets: $30 gen. adm., $25 seniors & students
Running time: 2:15 incl. intermission
Subways: A, C, B, D to 145th Street.
HSA is located near 141st Street on the north side of Saint James Presbyterian Church.