Annette John-Hall: Image in need of resurrecting

Last week, street violence recorded yet another all-too-familiar heartache - two African American boys, one 9, the other 16, shot in their South Philadelphia neighborhood.

The 9-year-old was caught in crossfire.

The 16-year-old was caught up in a deadly gangland battle over - Turf? Girls? Who knows?

"They're warring," the 16-year-old's 8-year-old brother observed.

Thank God they weren't killed. But way too many are.

Numbed as we are by the number of shootings, it would be easy to argue that the reasons why young, mostly African American males make such ill-advised choices are less important than the consequences, which are often deadly.

Daniel Beaty begs to differ.

Beaty, 33, knows what it's like to be young, black and male, standing at the crossroads of triumph or despair. And he understands how easy it is to give in to your circumstances and choose despair.

Which is part of what he's trying to get at in his new play,

Resurrection

, running through Feb. 22 at the Suzanne Roberts Theater.

"I feel that a lot of images of black men are stereotypical in the sense that we see men engaging in negative actions," Beaty says.

From Bill Cosby's rants to pastors' pulpits, we hear it all the time - the public tongue-lashing of black men. Nothing more than sperm donors, they're told. You know the definition of irresponsibility? There's a picture with your name right next to it.

Yet at the same time, we wink and nod at the masters of the universe, those corporate CEOs who refuse to change their greedy behavior - behavior we're all paying for.

Come to think of it, whatever happened to that gazillion-dollar financial bailout package anyway?

Beaty says it's important to understand that all black men didn't start off as felons, or drug-addicted, or HIV-positive - just some of the themes he examines through the eyes of six male characters, ages 10 to 60.

"I wanted to tell a story that explored the inner landscapes of black men - not as excuse-making, but for the sake of context. And as a way of seeing through their issues and possibly overcoming them."

Sure, the characters fall down, but they get up, hence the title.

Resurrection

isn't so much about pathology as much as it is about possibility.

And in that way, it echoes Beaty's own story.

He grew up in poverty in Dayton, Ohio, the youngest of five children. Father, heroin dealer; oldest brother, crack addict.

Still, Beaty was buoyed by positive role models - his mother, who went to work every day, and his third-grade teacher, who was the first to show him the video of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

"For the first time, I saw an image of a black man changing the world," he recalls. "I decided that was the kind of man I wanted to be."

He went on to graduate from Yale University and the American Conservatory Theater. He has written two plays and is under contract to develop a half-hour series for Showtime.

And in this era of Obama, a time of tremendous turmoil as well as hope, the timing of Beaty's play couldn't be better. As an artist, he doesn't underestimate the power of his image.

"Despite the negative images of African Americans that have permeated forever, the image of President Obama's entire family, even his mother-in-law, is stellar," he says.

Still, a black president, however aspirational, cannot change the dysfunction black men continue to struggle with, he says.

"President Obama is an extraordinary man," Beaty says. "But there are everyday men with extraordinary problems who have extraordinary courage to reach beyond them."

This play honors those men.

But it challenges others, too.

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www.philadelphiatheatercompany.org