James Wilson takes a look at This Land Was Made at the Vineyard Theatre:
The narrator and main character of Tori Sampson's This Land Was Made, now running at the Vineyard Theatre, identifies herself as a griot. Simultaneously storytellers, poets, and living archives, griots are an essential element of the oral traditions of West Africa. They are the conduits to the past, and they carry the narratives of their ancestors within them. At a time when Black histories are in danger of being stifled, Sampson chronicles the emergence of the Black Panther Party and insists that we not only take in the national story but also pass it along. |
