I was able to really visualize this play. My favorite skit was The Gospel According to Miss Roj and a close second was Symbiosis. The section dedicated to Miss Roj struck me the most because of the character. The scene is merely Miss Roj telling the audience who he is, (supposedly a terrestial) and what he thinks about everything-the decline of New York City, style, revenge, and Aretha Franklin. His character is dynamic and powerful, but what really drew me to him was how threatening he was. He's an effeminate man in woman's clothes yet ironically has the power to "steal one beat" from a person's heart every time he snaps his fingers. He even describes those who wronged him, citing a young thug he gave a heart attack. Miss Roj is a being of opposites; a preacher, a man, a diva. This duality mixed with a dangerous aura is what makes him so engaging and my favorite character of the play.
In Symbiosis, a man is struggling with his identity, trying to recreate a more "white" one in order to survive in a world that frowns on African American culture. This scene uses a man throwing away childhood memorabilia to convey a larger problem going on: The disesteem of African American pedagogy. This reproach of all things black is what leads the man to kill the kid. Yet in the end the kid cannot be destroyed, showing that you can't eradicate where you come from, that the man will always be black. I was glad the kid lived. It shows how life is successive, that in order to grow old you must first be young, and that youth will always be inside you, or found in the smooth melodies of a Temptations song.
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