[REVIEW] The Colored Museum, by George C Wolfe

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About 3 minutes read time

A hostess on the Middle Passage gives grim travel instructions. A Vietnam vet recounts how he helped his fellow soldiers reconcile with their futures. A drunk, impassioned drag queen tells it like it is, and still remains. An upwardly mobile Black man comes face to face with his living past. A pair of wigs give their wearer competing relationship advice.

All these strange scenarios and more form the 11 sketch exhibits of the 1986 play The Colored Museum, a satirical look at Black life, art, and history. The exhibits cover a range of emotions, from funny to strange to nostalgic to outright horrifying. All of them illuminate some facet or other of Black American culture, from our history to our hair to our constant self-criticism and future ideation.

This may be my favorite play, ever. I read it for the first time in Black Thunder, an anthology of Black theatre that I checked out from the library and seriously contemplated stealing because I loved it so much.(I should have–it’s now long out of print. That book had Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Colored Museum, and The First Breeze of Summer all together in the same place. Damn my ethics.) Something about the Museum, with all its weird, culturally cathartic exhibits, scratched a part of my developing brain just right, and still does to this day. Maybe it’s the speculative nature of the exhibits and the way they stretch reality to help it make more emotional sense. Maybe it’s the fearless juxtaposition of humor and horror, and the uncompromising emotional whiplash between each scene. Maybe it’s the way that many of these characters, despite being fundamentally unrealistic, are written in the voices of people I feel like I know.(Yes, even the talking wigs. Maybe especially them.)

I’ve never seen a live production of this show, but I’ve read it many times, which should tell you how readable it is. I hope one day I do get to see it, but reading it on its own is still an immensely satisfying experience. Until then, I’ll keep re-reading it, snapping my fingers to Aretha along with Miss Roj, giggling at the OTT bathos of The Last Momma on the Couch, and feeling the hairs on my arms rise whenever I read “Psst. Psst.”

A full house and a standing ovation to The Colored Museum.

(Fellow readers, I dare you to read one of the monologue scenes from this play out loud to yourself in the mirror and not feel something new and think something smart. Double dog dare. I’m also here to remind you that the links on this page lead to the Equal Opportunity Bookshop, which is an affiliate and therefore puts a little coin in my pocket every time you buy a book. Thank you for visiting, and go read something good! Peace!)