Ride Share, a thrillingly beautiful work written by Reginald Edmund and co-produced by Glencoe’s Writer’s Theatre and Black Lives, Black Words International Project, doesn’t pull its punches. Using the playwright’s personal experience as a Uber driver in our hyper-gig economy, Ride Share can legitimately be called autobiographical. But within minutes of the first lines being spoken, it quickly grows into a wonderfully insightful, incisive and intimate commentary on how we survive, love and sustain our sanity in an unevenly weighted system where social contracts have lost their influence.
Originally intended for the stage until Covid slammed the brakes on everything normal in our lives, Edmund and director Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway started imagining other possibilities for presenting the play and wondered what kind of opportunities those alternative options might hold. If Ride Share moved to the medium of film, could it be made more suspenseful or lend itself to convey emotions more kinetically? It could, and did it so successfully that it felt as if the pair had made a revolutionary discovery. For a performance with only a single actor carrying the entire story and who conducted rehearsals from his home on Zoom, that’s quite a feat. The final production was filmed in Los Angeles in April 2021.
Kamal Angelo Bolden as Marcus, at one moment on top of the world with a beautiful new wife, just back from an Aruba honeymoon and happy to be returning to his “cush” job; didn’t realize he was sitting right next to the cliff and was about to be pushed over. What was thought to be a standard business meeting with superiors suddenly turned into an exit interview when he’s told the company isn’t doing well and that despite his excellent work, his services are no longer needed. Marcus finds himself cast from heaven at 33 with an $85,000 wedding bill hanging over his head and a desperate need for work.
People in his position are often counseled not to take jobs too far below the one they just left because it’s easy to get stuck on that lower rung. Need however can often upend balanced rational decision-making, which is why he opts to enter the ranks of ride share drivers. The audience goes with him behind that curtain and learns firsthand the toll that decision takes on the body as well as the mind. With Marcus as our guide, we understand how endless hours behind the wheel can reveal the “best and the worst” in people and get a sense of how it feels to be flung from downtown to Joliet to Coal City to O’Hare at the whim of chance and an app’s algorithm.
Bolden, in his role as Marcus, is the essence of equanimity. The epitome of unconscious, natural charm and composure. Even when he’s justifiably miffed at the behavior of some of his customers, he’s unflappable. It startles us to learn Marcus isn’t completely alone when he’s driving. With him is someone he describes as the Dark Rider. Invisible, and filled with all the rage that Marcus pacifies with reason, the Dark Rider is a malevolent alter ego prone to erupting with indignation to threaten Marcus’s commitment to purpose and, more critically; his conviction in himself. It’s with the introduction of this potent force that heady layers of suspense descend on Ride Share and throw doubt and apprehension on the play’s horizon.
The alphabet soup of emotions a play like Ride Share demands of an artist is staggering but Bolden makes them flow like the alternating movements of a symphony. With every transition in the plot, he pours himself over the new theme and lose himself in its message. The barrier between the imagined world of the play and reality slips away and we become him. The seduction scene when a “sexy drunk” woman, beautiful and daringly willful, slides into the seat beside Marcus and initiates a slow purposeful chase. You can never tell whether he’s going to slip over the edge of temptation or valiantly prevail and “keep his eyes on the road”. Thanks to Edmund’s writing, Hodge-Dallaway’s canny directing, and Bolden’s splendid acting, the segment stands out as a fine piece of theater.
By the time Ride Share reaches this high point, it’s been accumulating challenges that all require conquering before moving on to the next customer; allowing us to gain more and more insight into the solidity of Marcus’s character. One obstacle though is particularly grating and has all the earmarks of something that could become explosive. We’re introduced to Craig three times. None of them with any warmth. One of the men who sat at Marcus’s termination meeting, Craig turns up not once, but twice as a fare. Smug, condescending and a braggart who wears his racism like a bullet proof vest, he’s also the person who played the pivotal role in Marcus’s dismissal from his job. The climatic confrontation between the two men releases the tension that’s been building throughout the production and ends with a finality that’s both dramatic and sage.
Dedicating the play to “all Black men and women”, this odd and revealing experience undertaken by Marcus was a test of resilience and an exercise in willed conviction. Acknowledging and accepting the omnipresent and universal rage prevailing in the Black community, Ride Share reminds us that something good and positive can still be extracted from a flawed reality as long as you “don’t take your foot off the gas”.
Ride Share
Through July 25, 2021
Black Lives, Black Words International Project & Writers Theatre