Javon Johnson Is Still Somewhat Hopeful

Today the Pasadena Playhouse launches a new program entitled PlayhouseLive. It is their alternative to being able to present live shows in their theatre. They are producing new material that will be available for streaming. The first of the shows they are releasing is Still. by spoken word artist Javon Johnson.

If you know Johnson’s poetry, it isn’t the first thing you’d expect to see or hear at the Pasadena Playhouse. He boldly tackles issues of race and civil rights in language that is blunt, direct and some might even consider profane. His work is powerful, challenging and moving.

Johnson is very well known in the poetry slam world. He is a three-time national poetry slam champion and a four-time national finalist. He is also the author of several books. His new book, Ain’t Never Not Been Black, will be released on October 13th by Button Poetry. It should also be noted that Johnson has his Ph.D. and is the Director of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Last week I spoke by phone with Johnson. With his infant daughter on his lap we spoke about Still., his collaboration with the Pasadena Playhouse and whether this moment in time makes him optimistic for his daughter’s future. Below are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

When you were first contacted by the Pasadena Playhouse did you ask yourself, “Really, the Pasadena Playhouse?”

[He laughs before answering] Actually I’ve performed in odd places in my entire poetry career. You’d be surprised. This wasn’t one of the odd ones. I know the Pasadena Playhouse has done things before like Fences. The reason I know is my uncle and my great aunt used to go. They would primarily go to see Black plays.

Theatre has a troubled history with Black performers and writers. One could make the argument theatre is the wrong place. But it has opened its door, even if it’s been a fraught history.

Art has the capacity to push beyond and make people uncomfortable. What other place is best to explore than the performance; to exercise, to imagine alternate possibilities. Art should make us uncomfortable. If not, it’s not doing it’s job and we’re not doing our job.

In the announcement video for Still. you said, and I’m paraphrasing, the show is about being joyous in spite of the fact the way the world exists has announced us as dead on arrival. Your poem Black and Happy announces you as being proudly happy in spite of current events. Is that poem, which ends with the line “We still,” both an inspiration for your show and going to be included in it?

That poem is what we end on. Interestingly enough I thought about calling it Still. before we decided to end on that line. Thinking of the stillness of this moment and what it means. Black folks are still targeted by the judicial apparatus, still fighting for something different, still fighting fights we thought we got over in the civil rights era, fighting for medical, housing and education. In spite of that, young people are still living and still caring and giving America the opportunity to be the country it says it is.

When creating art that has a strong political component, are you preaching to the converted who attend the performing arts?

I’ve always had an issue with preaching to the converted because the converted still need to be preached to. I’m a preacher’s kid. I grew up in the church. We want to feel that we are in a space for a moment and we’re amongst like-minded people. We’re good. The world is beautiful and amazing for one moment.

That’s the magic of theatre to lift us slightly above our emotional capacity and force us to ask the questions to live our lives like this all the time. What if we could always be this emotionally open, this vulnerable, this sort of human beings with one another? I think that matters.

As an artist and now a father, where do you find the faith, if you do, that things will ultimately get better?

I don’t. I don’t know if they will. I hold out hope. I do my part. I hope and trust other human beings will do their part. But I’m not entirely sure that I can trust that things will get better. I think my daughter has terrified me significantly in that they might not get better and what does that mean to her. I’ll be honest, there are moments I look at this face and I’m utterly terrified that I would have failed, and others would have failed, in creating the kind of world the next generation needs and desires. I’m paralyzed with what possibilities it opens up to her and what opportunities it closes off to her. What does that look like? They are hard questions that aren’t easy to answer.

Musician/artist/composer Jason Moran told Billboard Magazine that one reason his staged reading of Between the World and Me (a collaboration with Ta-Nehisi Coates) doesn’t offer resolution is, “specifically because this country hasn’t found a way to resolve centuries of terror.” Do you think this country ever will and, if it did, how do you think that would impact your artistic expression?

To answer what it would do for my art, I will always have things to write about. My journey is to try to understand racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia – all of those start first and foremost with family. At the end of the day I’m still a mama’s boy who wants his mama to say it’s okay. I want to have a daughter who says to me the same.

I don’t believe a resolved racism world can happen unless we solve those other troubled -isms. There are still issues. The utopia of having a perfect place – and no place can be perfect – means there will always be issues or concerns. Even if I just turned to writing about my personal life and my family life, there will always be something to perform about.

The first part of your question I’m torn and I guess that’s the easiest way to say it. The academic and cynic in me says it won’t. We seek solutions in the very structure that creates the problems we are trying to solve. The artist in me is somewhat hopeful. The one who constantly creates is somewhat hopeful. The one who says there’s a tomorrow is somewhat hopeful. The activist in me has seen so many young activists do so much brilliant work that I cannot help but see the hope in the artist in me. But the academic has read so much, I don’t know how to see that. I live with that contradiction.

Tickets to rent “Still.” are $19.99 and allow you to watch the show through November 1st.

Photo of Javon Johnson in Still. by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse

Update: This post has been updated to include a period – “.” at the end of the title of the show. Still. is the show’s complete title.