The Colored Museum

The exhibit opens with “a hurricane of energy” as Topsy Washington takes the stage (50). She tells the audience she loves to party. She begins to recount a party she went to the other night way uptown. She calls it “the largest gathering of Black/Negro/colored Americans you’d ever want to see” (50). She describes humorous anachronisms like Nat Turner sipping champagne out of Eartha Kitt’s slipper. Not only real-life people were there like Malcom X and Angela Davis but also fictional characters like Aunt Jemima.

She says they were all dancing together to one beat. Then the floor started to shake before the entire room lifted off the ground and went flying through space, defying logic and limitations until it disappeared into her head. She listens to the music in her head, and then music begins playing quietly. She tells us she’s dancing to the music and the “madness” in her.

Miss Roj, Lala, Miss Pat, and the Man from “Symbiosis” revolve onto the stage, frozen like sculptures. Topsy says that she thought they had given up the drums, but she has realized that they live on inside her in her speech, her walk, and her hair. She says she feels a universal connectedness to everybody and everything that’s ever been. All the other characters begin speaking together with her. They proclaim: “I’m not what I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I’m all that and then some. And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it” (52).

Suddenly, a frenzy erupts as all the characters begin speaking at the same time, repeating key passages from their previous exhibits as images flash onto the museum walls of Black Americans living their lives—partying, rioting, being lynched, surviving.

Topsy sings, “there’s madness in me and the madness sets me free” (53). She exclaims, “My power is in my […]” (53). Everybody onstage shouts; “Madness!”

Topsy replies, “And my colored contradictions” (53).

The sculptures all freeze, and we hear the voice of Miss Pat: “Before exiting, check the overhead as any baggage you don’t claim, we trash” (53). The lights go to blackout.