Play invites audience into homeless world

By Donna Marbury
Contributing Writer
Columbus Post

If you frequent any of the city’s various poetry spots, you realize that a poet’s inspiration can stem from a number of things. A poet could have had a hard day, seen a rainbow, or in the case of the Carrying a Stick Poetry Club, she could be homeless.
The play, Carrying a Stick, focuses on seven women who through a variety of circumstances, find themselves living together in dilapidated conditions, but connected through poetry.
The play was written by Poet Is Said and directed by dancer Najiyyah Muqtasid, whose understanding of femininity is pure in this production. Because the play is presented in the intimate New Harvest venue, it gives the audience a chance to engage in the type of people they usually pass on the streets. Each performer’s personal portrayal makes the audience feel five feet away from the sorrows that the women feel.
Kim Denizard’s portrayal of Roxi abandons all of the stereotypical, comical references of drug addicts usually shown in television and movies. Her erratic hysterics are balanced by a sincerity and poetic clarity that makes her human. The wise Marylyn is played by Kehinde W. Powell, who despite her homelessness maintains the level-headedness of the household.
Because of and in spite of being homeless and drug addicted, these women write poetry. Not only do they write it, but present it to each other once a week in a tradition that allows them to come outside of who they are and be artists.
In her own way, each actress represents how close each of us is to being down and out. The only things these women have are each other and words, and without food, warmth and respect, they cherish that more than anything.
Is Said wrote the play after visiting homeless shelters and doing six years of research in Columbus. Paying homage to the old phrase “carrying a stick,” which symbolizes that someone has to carry around all of their belongings, Is Said puts a face, and beautiful words to an otherwise ugly experience.

The same way world-renowned artist Aminah Robinson uses urban art to describe the Near East side, Is Said continues to show his grasp of the central Ohio black experience in one of his many plays.
Performances will be held at New Harvest, 1675 Arlington Ave., Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7 at 7 p.m. for $12 at the door, $10 in advance. A special Mother’s Day dinner-theater performance will be on Sunday, May 8 at 3 p.m. for $25 at the door, $20 in advance. For more information, call 614-252-7525.