The Bluest Eye Meets the White Gaze
The Bluest Eye—the first novel written by Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Toni Morrison—comes to Pasadena's Noise Within Theatre as a theatrical performance. Beautifully adapted for the stage by Lydia Diamond, Morrison’s lyrical rendering speaks to the consequences of a people who are immersed in a larger society that either despises them or blinds itself to its effect on them.
Centered on the life of young Pecola Breedlove, a child desperately longing to be loved, The Bluest Eye offers a glimpse into the far-reaching destruction of unyielding, all-encompassing white supremacy.
Kacie Rogers, Akilah A. Walker, and Mildred Marie Langford / Craig Schwartz
Set in Ohio in the 1940s, The Bluest Eye tells the story of three young Black girls who try to deal with the poisonous effects of systemic racism and shame thrust upon them is a largely white town. One of them—11-year-old Percola—blames her especially dark skin for her plight. If only she had blue eyes, she imagines, people would love and respect her.
Successfully adapted for the stage, Morrison’s 1970 novel conveys the consequences of living in an environment where you and all of your people fall short of reaching beauty standards the dominant culture has imposed. Accepting that she will never meet those Eurocentric beauty standards is something Pecola cannot do—thus the bluest eye and the heart-rending tragedy that envelops her life.
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The ensemble. Craig Schwartz
Sitting in a largely white audience the afternoon the three of us attended, I wondered if my fellow white theatregoers fully appreciated the damage the “white gaze” can do—the play’s observation, for example, that a white store owner cannot even seem to see Percola, looking right through her, and then refusing to even touch her hand as he makes change for the candy she has purchased. Perhaps they understood, though surely for some it was a revelation. The Black people in the audience, young and old, knew it in their bones.
As a Black woman, raised in the United States, this topic is as familiar as a cup of coffee. Sadly, it is as relevant today as it was when the book was written, 50 years ago.
A Noise Within is located at 3352 E Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, California 91107. The Bluest Eye is recommended for mature audiences ages 14 and up. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (626) 356-3100 or go here.
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Hollywood Progressive.
