Theater Review: Hooded or Being Black For Dummies

As the list of atrocities committed by the police and whites against blacks continues to pile up and the incarceration of African-Americans that accelerated after Bill Clinton’s crime bill in the ’90’s continues to expand—in response to private for-profit prison demands on the state and the racism of the white power structure—there is a growing awareness and resistance to such behaviors and the system that engenders it.

Part of overcoming the inertia of prejudice—built over millennia and fed by a power structure that uses it to divide and distract its subjects—is to walk the proverbial mile in another person’s shoes. In the regional premiere of Hooded or Being Black For Dummies, playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm cleverly does just that for black and white audiences, when a young black male, Marquis (AJ Volitan), adopted and raised in a white family, meets Tru (Randy Chalmers), a bro from the hood, who schools him on being black, while Hunter (John Hauser), a privileged young white male, gets a hold of Tru’s manual (which was meant for Marquis) and works on being black.

Full review at Colorado Drama