Who doesn’t want to see a live performance that’s a retelling of a shooting at a school board meeting via music, dance, humor, strobe lights, fog, underwear, and discomfort? These were my somewhat skeptical thoughts I had as The Clay Duke was about to begin. (Though I will admit to being intrigued.) 

Seemingly imbued with the power of clairvoyance, OtB Artistic Director Lane Czaplinksi anticipated my sentiment (which apparently was not confined only to the recesses of my nervous mind), writing about it in his Curator Note in the program. He concluded:

When I think of essence, I think of Herbal Essences shampoo ads, and watching them as a kid. The commercials were racy for a quiet 8 year old preacher’s kid from Minnesota, especially when attempting to empathize with the woman, what that must feel like for her. But my parents bought the product regardless. I remember using it in the shower and thinking, “This shampoo is the best thing I’ve ever smelled.” That stuff was serious.

On the day that Mandela passed on, it is easy and necessary to celebrate another great African, Chinua Achebe, who wrote "Things Fall Apart." They do, with  regularity, baffling us in the anthropomorphic world we have created over the past hundred and fifty years, hoping to construct Adam Smith's utopia.