In 1998, a 19-year-old African-American woman named Tyisha Miller was shot 12 times by California police officers while she lay unconscious in her car. The officer who killed her claimed that Miller had woken up and reached for her gun, and that he was acting in self-defense; this was later disproven in court.
Too much can happen in a matter of seconds; an entire life extinguished. Dreamscape is a work of hip-hop theatre that expands and inhabits these final seconds of Miller’s life: shifting between spoken word, rap, beatboxing, and movement, one performer takes on Miller’s voice while the other adopts the roles of MC, coroner, and police officer. The play’s inventive structure uses the trajectory of each bullet to warp us back in time, letting us in on the memories that made up Miller’s life before it was violently taken. Actress Jada Evelyn Ramsey is enrapturing as Miller: full of wit and charisma whether she is conspiratorially sharing stories about her teen years, or spitting bars licked with grief and rage. “To protect and to serve, right?” she asks. “It’s written there in black and white.”
The coroner’s clinical description of a bullet’s path through her scalp prompts a celebration of Black women’s hair; another bullet shattering her jaw recalls that dreaming about losing one’s teeth symbolises the loss of childhood innocence. This is an autopsy not just of Miller’s body, but of her stolen life, and the systemic denial of personhood to Black women that permitted her murder. While its beatboxing transitions at times hang a bit threadbare on stage and undercut its momentum, Dreamscape is a remarkably powerful piece of writing – one that demands we close this chapter of state-sanctioned violence against Black women.
Dreamscape, Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower, until 24 Aug (not 11), 1.30pm