Review: THE BLACK FEMINIST GUIDE TO THE HUMAN BODY is a Poetic Look at the Life Experiences of Black Women

The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body, while staged as a play, is more of an artistic poetic reading. Lisa B. Thompson’s brief 80-minute work, currently on stage at The Black Rep, examines the life experiences of one woman told by three voices.

Velma Austin (Dr. Beatrice “Bea” Free), Janelle Grace (Cee), and Ricki Franklin (Dee) represent the mind, body, and soul of Bea. The three share Bea’s experiences growing up as a young girl, her maturation through six decades of life, and finally embracing her self-worth as a confident older adult.

Austin, Grace, and Franklin elegantly connect to Thompson’s writing. They’re not reciting, or acting, but building a bridge to shared common lived experience.

While Thompson’s writing is specific to her black female experience, the themes she explores are relatable across all races and genders. The three actors share anecdotal stories about the awkwardness of childhood, the need to acculturate, feeling under appreciated, gaining your voice as a young adult, embracing aging, finding joy in reminiscing, fearing disease, and facing mortality.

Director Kathryn Ervin, choreographer Heather Beal, and sound designer Asha-Ti Nu lean into all of Thompson’s themes, but it’s when they embrace her glee that the shared experience strikes a chord. Ervin, Beal, and Nu lean on nostalgizing with music, dance, memories of Don Cornelius, Soul Train, and the show’s signature dance moment.

One courageous audience member volunteered to make the trio a quartet of women who invoked memories of the Soul Train Line, The Bump, The Hustle, and scads of other dance fads. The bit engulfed the Hocthner Studio. The audience filled with Baby Boomers and Gen Xers relished jubilant memories as the four women exuberantly danced. The palpable energy flourished as the audience exclaimed “it’s electric” to Marcia Griffiths’ Electric Boogie.

The actors and audience lean into communal euphoric recollections and that makes Thompson words resonate. Black women will certainly find greater poignance in Thompson’s writing, Ervin’s staging, and the trio’s spirited performances, but all theatergoers will feel a connection to Dr. Bea and her alter egos human journey. It is Thompson’s intimate writing that knits us all together.

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