This Is Modern Art

A Play

Kevin Coval, Idris Goodwin

• Éditeur: Haymarket Books
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781608466634
• Sujet: Literatura
• Sous-sujet: Arte dramático americano

Graffiti crews are willing to risk anything for their art. Called vandals, criminals, even creative terrorists, graffiti artists set out to make their voices heard and alter the way people view the world. But when one crew finishes the biggest graffiti bomb of their careers, the consequences get serious and spark a public debate asking, "Where does art belong?"

Kevin Coval is the author of Schtick, L-vis Lives, the American Library Association "Book of the Year" Finalist Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica, and an editor of The BreakBeat Poets.

Idris Goodwin is a playwright, spoken-word performer, and essayist recognized across mediums by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.

Lights up on Seven, speaking to the audience.

SEVEN

The right piece of graffiti will change somebody’s life. I know it. The sight of it, knowing that another human being could go against the will of the rest of the world.

This is not a confession.

Beat

—

Transition

Selena is in her car, wearing an earpiece. We hear the “click clack—psssttt” of the aerosol cans. Fade up on Seven, JC and Dose inside the Damen silos—an abandoned factory, working on walls. Littered across the ground are cans, bottles, wood, glass and debris. The walls have color everywhere.

SEVEN

(in an ear piece)

How’s it lookin out there, Selena?

SELENA

You guys are good, Sev. It’s a ghost town.

SEVEN

You good tho, love?

DOSE

(mocking voice, makes a kissy noise)

You good tho, love?

Sev, cakin’ too hard. What we in, a hostess factory? You hear this dude, Jase?

Turns to JC who is deep in concentration. He ignores Dose.

Jase?

SEVEN

Leave ’em be. He zonin’, anyway. So yo, Dose, I peeped some of your little spots off Fulton. And out west on Lake Street. You been gettin’ up heavy.

DOSE

Ya boy is everywhere, my dude.

SEVEN

Word up. I ran with FACT the other day. Ripped a whole run of warehouses.

DOSE

He nice with it. Bubble letters. Craaazy.

SEVEN

True . . .

DOSE

But yo, he told me ENOCH is only doing permission walls now.

SEVEN

Word?

DOSE

Yeah, he’s on his second strike so he gotta take it easy.

SEVEN

I respect that.

DOSE

(with emphasis)

Yeah, but permission walls tho . . . ?

SEVEN

What’s your beef with permission walls?

Dose makes a sound: Pffft!

SEVEN

What? If somebody offered you a stack and some paint to do a wall—legally—you’d say pffft!?

DOSE

I’m a purist, man.

SEVEN

Whatever dude. Can't knock a cat for wan...