49 pages • 1 hour read
George C. WolfeThe Colored Museum
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Sketch 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Sketch 1 Summary: “Git on Board”
The exhibit opens with the sound of drums pounding, accompanied by images projected onto the white walls onstage. The images are of African slaves being captured, tortured, and loaded onto slave ships. The lights come up to reveal Miss Pat standing on stage in a pink flight attendant’s uniform.
Miss Pat welcomes the audience members aboard “Celebrity Slaveship” on route to Savannah from the Gold Coast, listing stops in the West Indies along the way. She informs the passengers they must wear their shackles at all times while removing a shackle from an overhead compartment. She demonstrates how the passengers are to then fasten the shackles to themselves. Two “Fasten Your Shackle” signs light up on either side of her. Miss Pat reiterates that, aside from some dancing and stretching, shackles must be worn at all times.
She asks the audience to refrain from call-and-response singing between the cabins as “that sort of thing can lead to rebellion” (2). She emphasizes that no drums are allowed on board, insisting the audience repeat the direction “no drums” after her. The “Fasten Your Shackles” sign illuminates again, and the plane takes off as satirical muzak begins. The tune mimics a corporate jingle with the lyrics “Get on Board Celebrity Slaveship” (2).
Drumming is then heard offstage, causing Miss Pat to unshackle herself and rise to remind the passengers that no drumming is permitted onboard. She surmises it must be coming from coach and implores the passengers not to respond to the drums. She forces the passengers to repeat after her, “I don’t hear any drums” and “I will not rebel” (3). As the drumming intensifies, Miss Pat surmises it is occurring as a result of the recent news regarding a past tragedy onboard another ship, the Laughing Mary. Miss Pat assures the passengers that the Celebrity will not throw the passengers overboard and collect the insurance, stating, “We value you!” (3).
Miss Pat singles out audience members and speaks to them directly. She cheerily describes how their singing in the cotton fields will give birth to the music of James Brown and the Fabulous Flames and how they will one day come up with the best dances, the Watusi and the Funky Chicken. She assures them that they will suffer for a few hundred years but that a complex culture will then emerge. She then takes out a basketball and asserts that with its help, “you’ll become millionaires!” (3).
A roar of thunder is heard, and the Fasten Shackles sign once again illuminates. The drumming intensifies, and Miss Pat attempts to calm the passengers with gospel songs. The drumming goes wild as the plane is taken into a supernatural time warp.
Controlling her hysteria, Miss Pat describes the time warp the plane is traveling through. She quickly rattles off a summary of the next 300 years. She lists the following events, briefly summarizing their overall effect on the lives of African Americans: the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War I and World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars. She goes on into the emergence of popular culture and the civil rights movement. The drums intensify, and Miss Pat’s speech becomes more manic and intense as she exclaims, “You can’t turn back the clock” (5). She screams at the audience to repeat after her: “I don’t hear any drums, I will not rebel” (5).
The lights go out, Miss Pat screams, and the plane is heard landing. When the lights come back up, a disheveled Miss Pat attempts to return to her previous perky self and informs the passengers they have landed safely in Savannah. She asks the passengers to check their overheard storage before exiting as “any baggage you don’t claim, we trash” (5).
As Miss Pat begins her rehearsed farewell wishes, a luggage carousel revolves onto the stage. Mixed in with the bags are several slaves wearing luggage tags around their necks.
Sketch 1 Analysis
The fact that this play begins with drums pounding ties into a central motif of The Colored Museum: Drums are deeply tied to the roots of the Black identity. The images that flash onto the museum walls are disturbing records of the not-too-distant past. These images are intended to simultaneously jolt the audience’s awareness and invite them to begin examining the subject of slavery and its legacy.
The first exhibit introduces us into the museum and the world of the play. The fact that Wolfe chooses a flight at the entrance to the play should not be overlooked. In the 1980s, flights were still very much the mode of travel for middle- to upper-class individuals only, and many African Americans could not afford to fly, much less on a transatlantic flight. Thus, the use of a flight is itself an ironic choice, immediately granting the audience member a bump in social status. The name of the flight, “Celebrity Slaveship,” is also an ironic and contradictory one. If the passengers are celebrities, how can they be slaves? This theme of contradiction is central to the play and appears later in several sketches.
The route of the flight, from the Gold Coast to Savannah, is also important as it follows the Middle Passage portion of the Atlantic slave trade, a triangular practice that existed between Europe, Africa, and North America from the 16th to 19th centuries. During this time, manufactured goods were brought by ship from Europe to Africa and were traded for enslaved people. These people were then transported to North America via the West Indies, where they were in turn traded for valuable crops not easily available in Europe, such as tobacco, cotton, and sugar. The ships would then return to Europe with these goods, thus completing the triangle.
The fact that Miss Pat asks the passengers to obey the “Fasten Shackles” sign instead of a “fasten seatbelts” sign is, again, ironic. While seatbelts are intended for the safety of passengers, shackles were a method of control and suppression exerted on the enslaved passengers by the predominantly white crew.
The fact that Miss Pat is a Black woman is also significant as slave ships would have had a mostly white male crew. Miss Pat, dressed as a flight attendant, therefore plays the role of “mimicking” her own oppressor. Mimicry is an important concept in post-colonial writing and thought. The act of mimicry of dress, customs, and behavior by the colonized subject is thought to be an attempt by the subject to gain some of the power of the oppressor. This behavior becomes problematic when the mimic suppresses their own cultural identity or cultural behaviors to become more like those of the oppressor. Mimicry can also serve the satirical function, however, of subverting the culture of the oppressor through highlighting the artificiality of their behavior. Miss Pat’s saccharine behavior would certainly suggest that this is part of Wolfe’s intent.
Miss Pat goes on to demand that the passengers obey certain rules—specifically, no call-and-response singing and no drums. The suppression of call-and-response singing represented an attempt by slave traders and plantation owners to convert slaves to the traditions of Christianity. The tradition of call-and-response singing held out, however, and is still an important part of modern African American culture. As Miss Pat goes onto point out, it will form the roots of popular African American music.
Miss Pat’s “No Drums” rule refers to the fact that drums were banned in the United States out of fear they would be used as a messaging system for rebellion. Drum messaging is known to have been used during the Stono Rebellion of 1739. Miss Pat’s reference to the tragedy onboard the Laughing Mary, where passengers were thrown overboard for the insurance money, is a dark reference to the brutal treatment of slaves during the transatlantic passage of slave ships. Miss Pat makes it clear, however, that the passengers are now a commodity and therefore hold value.
Through Miss Pat’s guidance and the sudden time warp, the passage of the Celebrity Slaveship serves as a boiling down of the history of Black slavery into a commodifiable Black celebrity. The singing of gospel and call-and-response music that becomes funk and soul music, the dances, and even the references to basketball stars all serve to shape the overarching concept that the suffering and resilience of African Americans has gone on to create a product that is commercially viable and useful in the New World. The “time warp,” then, serves as a magical device to move the audience quickly into the contemporary world. The sketch functions as a synecdoche, where the individual passenger represents a transgenerational collective experience.
Miss Pat’s closing statement is an important one: “Please check the overhead before exiting as any baggage you don’t claim, we trash” (5). Baggage or past pain is a central motif in the play. For many of the characters, coming to terms with or dealing with past pain is central to their story.
