Freedom/Imprisonment
Posted by Joy Meads on 2/18/2010
(Joy is the Literary Manager at Steppenwolf)
SPOILER ALERT: this post is intended for readers who have already seen The Brothers Size and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet and may spoil some surprises within the show. If you are able to attend The Brothers Size and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet, we ask that you read this post after you’ve seen the production.
Compare the way the stage is used in The Brothers Size and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet. In Marcus, the action consumes the entire stage and more, spilling out into the aisles and clambering part-way up a ladder. But in The Brothers Size, four rocks mark the corners of a tightly-confined playing space, surrounded by darkness. As the three characters pace their small enclosure, the space feels restrictive, claustrophobic. The image resonates with the nightmarish confinement of Oshoosi’s prison cell, or his and Ogun’s long nights in their childhood bedrooms, isolated in the darkness behind a closed door. Elegba conflates these two images when trying to help Ogun understand his brother’s experience in prison:
“Prison make grown men scared of the dark again. Put back the boogy monsters and the voodoo man we spend our whole life trying to forget…”
But there are moments when the stage doesn’t have this claustrophobic feel. When Oshoosi and Ogun wail Otis Redding together in the middle of the night, their music soars beyond the walls of the room and the stage suddenly feels cozy rather than confining. The stage becomes intimate because of the close connection between the two brothers.
This duality is a beautiful physical manifestation of the play’s complex treatment of freedom and imprisonment. Even after he’s released, Oshoosi is still confined by his limited opportunities. With the eye of the law and (more benevolently) his brother watching his every move, his movement is constrained within a narrow scope. He dreams of Madagascar, but it seems that he can realistically only travel as far as the Food Lion. Ogun finally gives him his freedom: sending him on down an open road to Mexico and seemingly infinite possibility. But Oshoosi weeps when he’s given the freedom he’s dreamed of. It comes at a cost: he’s never able to see his brother Ogun again, never able to experience the intimacy of that tight room. Similarly, Ogun longs to be freed from his responsibility for his brother. As he tells Oshoosi, “You say I ain’t never been in the pen? Nigga whenever you fall everyone look at me like I fucking pushed you… That’s my life sentence… That’s my lock down… All my life I carry your sins on my back.” But the Ogun we see in Marcus, freed for years from that responsibility, is still mourning the loss of his brother.