What is it like to be an addict? Not just the feeling of being high or the physical pain of withdrawal. But what is it like to make the choice every day between drugs and sober life?
October 22-25, Kalamazoo’s Face Off Theatre will explore these questions in the play “Chain” by Pearl Cleage. It’s about a 16-year-old girl named Rosa who’s addicted to crack cocaine. Her parents have chained her to a radiator in their Harlem apartment to keep her from using.
Rosa: My name Rosa Jackson and I’m a dope fiend. Everybody started laughing and everybody was like, 'I know that’s right!' And lady she was so mad, she was like, 'There is nothing funny about being a dope fiend.' And I said “That’s where you wrong. When you a dope fiend, everything is funny," says Rosa in the play.
Janai Travis and Katrina Ezeiyi are portraying Rosa in different performances of the one-woman show. Both actresses say they’ve never done a show quite like this one.
“Exhausting to say the least, but at the same time really rewarding because you get the opportunity as an artist to see what your limits are. To see how far you can actually go," says Travis.
"I really am also excited by the storytelling opportunities that comes with working by yourself and the behavior that’s layered in you know. And it doesn’t just depend on, 'Oh, someone else’s line is coming, let me hurry up with this moment.' We are the moment."
“You’re not really observing, you’re in there with her. Like you’re in that room kind of walking through her head with her,” Ezeiyi adds.
Rosa: Momma’s following me around like Dick Tracey, even to the bathroom. Then she hit me with the, “I done seen everything you got. I used to change your diapers. I’ll wait." And she did.
At only 16 years old, Rosa has been in and out of rehab for three years. The play speaks to how the United States and the “war on drugs” aren’t helping addicts to recover.
To Rosa, the chain is unusual punishment. Actress Travis says, to Rosa’s parents, it’s an act of love - keeping her clean and out of jail. A lot of the play is about love. Rosa thinks she's loved by her crack addicted friends and her boyfriend Jesus.
Rosa: Jesus not making me smoke it. He [Rosa's dad] said, “If that’s your real friend, he wouldn’t be giving you that."
“In these seven days, as she begins to reflect, the definition of love starts to change,"Travis explains. "And this rock might not be the best thing for me cause I don’t feel good right now and people left out some of these important facts about how I was going to feel. And then now when I think about it, I hurt a lot of people in the midst of getting what I thought I needed.”
“You know you could be off crack for ten years and then you have that mess up and then you’re off again. It could be two days, it could be ten years. Addiction is something that you fight for the rest of your life. Just knowing that and that there’s like a fifty-fifty chance either way has helped to understand this character," says Ezeiyi.
But Travis says this isn’t a message play. It’s an authentic story about one girl’s fight against the disease that is addiction.
“It’s not going to make you think at the end, ‘just say no.’ That’s not going to happen. You might see someone in your family and then all of the sudden you understand, ‘Oh man, that might have been deeper than what I knew.’ There might have been something else going on that I wasn’t sure of. So for me it’s just an authentic piece and I hope that I give it justice by being as authentic as possible about telling her story,” she says.
You can see Chain at the Epic Center Theater followed by a discussion on the play, Thursday through Sunday. The show does contain strong language and some adult themes.