Sunday, February 26, 2012

Stick Fly (In honor of its closing)

What's family without dysfunction, affairs, aggravation, sibling rivalry, separation and, of course, a whole lot of secrets?

Stick Fly was a representation of all of these. It dealt with self preservation and remembering who you are as an individual no matter what your family says or does. It was a reminder that our family isn't necessarily what defines us, contrary to what many believe.

Stick Fly is filled with people struggling to find out their true identities.

Rosie Benton, Mekhi Phifer, Tracie Thoms, Ruben Santiago Hudson,
Dulé Hill and Condola Rashad

Beginning with the father, always struggling with the fact that he will forever live beneath his wife's father. He felt so powerless and inferior that he needed to sleep with the maid to feel like a "man". Then there was his perfect, rich, plastic surgeon son, so unconcerned with who he was as long as he had money and his waspy girlfriend. There was the younger son who was constantly struggling to figure out what he wanted to do, and of course, once he did, he was thought of as a joke by his father. There was the waspy girlfriend who was so unvalued by her boyfriend and was using him because he was black to make her parents mad. There was the younger son's girlfriend who grew up poor and unrecognized by her famous and successful father who completely denied her existence.

And then there was Cheryl (Played by Condola Rashad. INCREDIBLE). Cheryl was the maid's daughter. She grew up without a father. She was always out of place, going to predominantly white and rich prep schools and always being one of the few African Americans, as well as the only poor one. She was the only character that could cope with family, that understood that we are independent of our families, that they don't necessarily define us. When her mother calls to tell her that the man Cheryl works for is her father, she confronts him. He does nothing. In response to this, she merely utters, "Well that sucked."

She didn't dwell on her misfortune, she accepted that shit happens and she always just let life go on.

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