Winie Coulanges

Editor-in-Chief

Photo Via Segal Centre

The venue is small, ripe with anticipation and on stage there are two small clothing racks with shirts that read “ Slavery was not a choice” and “Kanye was wrong about the jews”, a glimpse into what segal’s centre Pain to Power: A Musical Protest has in store for its audience. The play was originally presented by the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre and was presented in Montreal in collaboration with the Black Theatre Workshop. The show opens with the lyrics “ Somewhere far along this road, he lost his soul. He’s heartless”, a song that feels strangely ominous knowing the fall from grace from its author, Kanye West. As the main characters make their entrance and sing the melodies, headlines, photos, and video clips of West’s recent anti-semitic and anti-black tirades are projected on stage and you just can’t help feeling uneasy. Written in major part by CJ Capital and Seth Zosky who play themselves on stage, this play is one of the most personal I’ve ever seen. 

The play tackles the famous question of : Can we separate the art from the artist? While it doesn’t offer its audience a simple answer, it takes them on a journey to rediscover the power of a legacy. CJ and Seth approach this by positioning themselves as victims of West’s bigotry as Black and Jewish Canadians. With the help of West’s discography they do a retrospective of the most defining moments of their lives like the first kiss at sleepaway camp or winning a talent show contest. This walk down memory lane is presented on stage with classics like “ American Boy” and “ Runaway”. Both actors sing and dance their hearts out in choreography designed by Travae Williams. 

The play bears resemblance with the genre of documentary theatre which uses source materials from personal events and explores socio political events. For example, CJ confronts West’s famous “Slavery is a choice” comment by giving an account of a tense interaction with a police officer after George Floyd’s murder. Scenes like that are frequent in the play and demonstrate that West’s bigotry has an impact in the real world. His Bipolar diagnosis has sometimes been used as an excuse for his erratic behaviour but CJ and Seth reject this by having a scene where they say “ Bipolar doesn’t cause antiblackness and antisemitism”. 

While I wasn’t a Kanye superfan before the show, I did really enjoy the incorporation of his music in the show as it was well executed by the talented performers.  The ending was a spectacular celebration of religion, perseverance, and love as CJ and Seth sang a blended Haitian Creole/Yiddish prayer. I took away that Pain to Power was ultimately not about West, but about how we can extract the admirable parts of a legacy and transform them into things that inspire us to pursue our passions. In the end, it wasn’t about separating art from anyone but saying goodbye and hello to a new version of oneself.