![]() ![]() ![]() At one point, Baldwin says of a hypothetical encounter with a cop: “He may be a very nice man. Portrayed by two accomplished actors, Crystal Dickinson (Clybourne Park, Cullud Wattah) and Carl Clemons-Hopkins (who portrays Marcus, the comedian’s CEO, in the HBO Max series “Hacks”), the two writers sit in a sunken living room on bright orange couches, and converse about racism, slavery, what they agree is the coming inevitable holocaust, the pressures on Black men (here is one of the few times that Baldwin is directly personal, talking about his father), the writer’s responsibility to himself, police mistreatment of Black people. But the two-hour conversation (trimmed on stage to 90 intermission-less minutes) is far more intellectual than anything you could have seen on Johnny Carson’s show at the time, certainly not at this length. “Lessons in Survival 1971,” running at the Vineyard Theater through June 30, is based on then-28-year-old poet Nikki Giovanni’s interview-turned-conversation with the famous writer James Baldwin, then 47, which was broadcast in 1971 on the WNET television series “SOUL,” described as America’s first Black Tonight Show. ![]()
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