Black Man, Blind Man: Disability Identity Politics and Performance

Abstract

This essay analyzes the Kennedy Center’s June 2003 solo autobiographical performance piece, Weights, by Lynn Manning, a blind African American performer and playwright. In Weights, Manning tells the story of his sudden transformation from life as a “black man” to life as a “blind man” after surviving a gunshot wound to the head. The essay argues for the continued relevance and efficacy of identity-based politics and representational practices by examining through the lens of “postpositivist realism” Manning’s performance text and the audience, which included at least one hundred fifty people with disabilities.

Even before Lynn Manning's autobiographical performance piece, Weights, began, I remember thinking that there's really no such thing as solo performance. Disability performance contexts make this even more apparent.¹ While even the most bare-bones solo performances rely on some collaboration with others, they tend to downplay or hide their support structures. Manning's piece, though, made visible a whole network of people needed to perform a "one-man" show, even before the performer set foot on stage. This network collaborated with Manning to communicate his message to a uniquely diverse audience assembled at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage on June 14, 2003. On that night, the audience of about four hundred people included at least one hundred fifty from the disability community, with its variety of accessibility needs. Downstage right, an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter perched on a stool, waiting. At the edge of downstage left was a long rectangular screen ready to display real-time captioning of Manning's words for the hard of hearing. In an elevated box seat situated house left was an audio describer, a person wearing a headset and ready to describe the visual aspects of the performance for those with visual impairments. Ushers roamed through the crowd hawking various versions of the program (standard-print, large-print, and braille) and assistive listening devices for the hard of hearing who preferred them to the real-time captioning screen. Ushers also negotiated the seating arrangements with audience members, even as the show was about to begin. Neat rows of chairs with clearly delineated empty spaces meant for wheelchair users morphed into hodge-podge clusters as the audience rearranged chairs to fit the bodily configurations of particular social groupings. Aisles were adjusted to make room for crutches, canes, large power wheelchairs, and service dogs. The hard of hearing clustered in front of the real-time captioning screen, and the ASL users in front of the interpreter. It was a fire marshal's nightmare.

While this network was configuring itself, the stage waited. A rich blue curtain provided a luminous backdrop to the stage, which was bare except for a slightly elevated red mat center stage and an electronic keyboard downstage left. As the stage lights brightened and the house lights dimmed, somewhat ominous Afro-Latin synthesizer music with a quickening drumbeat swelled and intensified, occasionally punctuated by a hissing sound. Manning, a tall African American man with an athletic build, slowly entered stage right with his hand on the shoulder of his musician, Karl Lundeberg. Manning stopped when he got to the mat and subtly oriented himself to the space by feeling the mat's edges with his feet. For audience members who were not in the know, this entrance was perhaps the first clue that Manning is blind. The musician, who by now had crossed downstage to his keyboard, began drumming, adding intensity to the recorded soundscape. Manning then began a series of stylized judo moves, striking at invisible opponents around him. He did not seem to be striking at anyone in particular; instead, the movements were almost mechanized, his focus inwardly meditative. He then paused, looked out at the audience, and delivered the following epigraph, while slowly resuming his judo routine:

Yesterday, she said,
"I couldn't be so strong, if it happened to me."
"You have to lift weights," I quipped.
She laughed and tapped me on the bicep.

On the final line of this poem, Manning, in profile, raised his arm in a bicep curl and...