On Sunday afternoon, the Friday Center hosted "The Talk," a one-man show written and performed by UNC alum Sonny Kelly. The show centers on the conversation African American parents often have with their sons about the realities of American life for Black men.
The performance moved through different topics rapidly, weaving between the personal and the broadly experienced: between Kelly's reflections on his own family's struggles and the tragic deaths of Black Americans brutalized by the police. Kelly embodied over twenty characters during this one-man show, changing his voice and tone, using hats or glasses to switch between characters and using his body language and props to make the switch clear.
The show is largely inspired by Kelly's own experience with 'the talk' between him and his own son. In 2015, the news of Freddie Gray’s death — a result of fatal injuries sustained while in police custody — initiated a conversation between Kelly and his son, Sterling, on the way to school when Sterling was just seven years old.
Kelly brought this conversation to life on stage by reenacting the panic upon hearing the news. While he tried to switch the radio channels, projected images of Freddie Gray, along with static and fast-talking journalists on the radio ultimately merged into the words ‘Black Man.’ These words then played on a loop, until Kelly screamed those words himself and silenced the radio.
“I just told my son essentially something brief, like, 'hey, son, this happens in our country.‘ I've only got a few minutes. You're about to go to first grade. I don't want to burden you with the world and race politics,’” Kelly said, recalling the moment after the performance. “‘I just want to let you know this is real. So as a Black boy in America, you have to be careful and you have to be excellent and just do your best. And you're never really sure what's going to happen.’”
Sterling, now seventeen years old, said that even before he had 'the talk' with his father, he was somewhat aware of these racial issues because of Kelly's previous engagement with programs such as Find-a-Friend, a program in Fayetteville for at risk youth.
"How has [my understanding of The Talk] changed as I've gotten older? I don't feel like it's changed, but I do resonate with it more because I've grown up with the show at this point," Sterling said.
Sterling has now joined the family business as the audio and visual technician for Sunday’s show, his first time doing it at this scale.
Kelly’s spoken word and Sterling's visuals, like the American flag appearing intermittently during key moments and pictures of various real-life figures Kelly portrayed throughout, work together to tell Kelly's story.
