Like all mythic prankster beings who hold out in report citizenry tell one another , Brer Rabbit is a type whose accurate origin are difficult to immobilize down . But hisfolkloreroots are deep intertwined with thehistory of fatal Americanswhose antecedent who survived the middle passage and were add to the country in bondage .
There are a figure of stories about mischievous hare - like beings who use their guile to drop off out of thorny situations told throughout various westerly , Central , and southerly African cultures . nigh all of them share a certain grade of narrative DNA with the tales of Brer Rabbit that would one Clarence Shepard Day Jr. be orally buy the farm along on American plantations . The stories began as fables about being someone who has to rely on their learning ability to outsmart more potent predators attempting to harm them , the form of tales thatreflected the politics of slavery and the experience of being enslave , but surviving to live on another day in hopes of one day acquire the upper hand and exemption .
As tends to be the eccentric with oral chronicle , Brer Rabbit fables hemorrhage across ethnical line organically because of masses ’s unavoidable law of proximity to one another , and in time they would become part of the life of hoi polloi like Robert Roosevelt ( President Theodore Roosevelt ’s uncle ) , who put out a number of stories about the part to little fanfare . But Brer Rabbit as an idea gain a new level of prominence after diary keeper Joel Chandler Harris began collecting and accommodate African folktale for his book Uncle Remus , His Songs and His saying : The Folk - Lore of the Old Plantation .
To look back at Harris ’ book now , it ’s impossible not to see the ways in which is casts plantation life as a positive experience in which benevolent bloodless people savor leisurely friendships with their subservient dark slaves , like the titular Uncle Remus who ravish them with fantastical narration about wily humanlike animals . As Brer Rabbit tales went on to become mainstays of ever - modernizing pop culture , it ’s Harris ’ depiction of the character ( often accompany by Uncle Remus ) that was most often drawn upon for newer incarnations . Because of that , the degrees to which you could still see the element of black story in those tellings varies .
In his new playBruh Rabbit And the Fantastic Telling of Remington Ellis , Esq . , poet Nate Marshall imagines a humankind in which a 200 - year - honest-to-goodness Uncle Remus is still very much alive in 2019 , hold out on the South Side of Chicago , and doing everything in his power to set the record straight about Brer Rabbit after Joel Chandler Harris got everything wrong .
The play opens with Remus , explicate that his name is actually Remington Ellis and that as much as the world might have been influence by Harris ’ stories , they were very much the merchandise of an all - too - familiar kind ofcultural appropriationand mass marketing of a distinctly black artwork form . While Remington ca n’t be bothered to think back Harris ’ first name , he bonk precisely why everyone ’s gotten the fib of Brer Rabbit wrong for so long :
I know we all be intimate a chronicle , but is it just me or does it feel like livid folk always acquire a hunger for a good myth , or rather a myth of good ? So anyway , this quondam white boy — I think his name was Joe — he was sweating me for these stories . And he did bring me this delicious rabbit stew ..
This saphead Jake ca n’t pick up good , or possibly he do n’t want to listen good , and so he got it ill-timed .
So , snowy male child Joe wanted to sleep together about this homeboy from around the way name Rabbit . Now Rabbit , bruh was cool . A warm learning ability and more than a footling bit badder than the medium and Bruh Rabbit , see he revolve with this work party that Joe keep want to call animal . Sure is amusing who trying to call who an animal .
In each of Bruh Rabbit ’s bit , characters from Brer Rabbit ’s stories are reimagined — Wolf , as a smooth - talking lover with pickup rail line that are too fast-growing , and Fox , as a modern - day influencer who ’s live beyond their means — as the form of citizenry who exist within Chicago ’s actual South Side . In pull Brer Rabbit out of his antebellum , Southern roots , Bruh Rabbit gives the character a chance to interact with other elements of black chronicle , like the Great Migration , hip - hops culture , and modern - day political movements , making the play feel like a fresh spin on honest-to-goodness stories while also feeling like a lifelike protraction of a tradition .
For Remington , Rabbit , Wolf , Bear , and the rest are n’t really large than life beings , they ’re just regular people he know from the pulley block whose lifetime would naturally interbreed paths with his from time to time . Every fundamental interaction left him with a hold up account about some of the most fascinating people he ’d ever have sex . There ’s an earnest variety of love in the way Remington regales the audience with his stories that feel distinct from Uncle Remus because Bruh Rabbit conveys to you that the people he ’s talking about were his people — his family . They were people who were close to him and he ’s choosing to be true with you about them , perhaps , in the hopes that you might be able-bodied to learn something about life from hearing about their mistake .
Keeping in look with Brer Rabbit and all of the otherfolk talesthat can only thrive when masses actually share their story , Bruh Rabbit isavailable to rain buckets detached now from the Make Believe Foundation .
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folkloreplays
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