Sonny Kelly’s “The Talk” illustrates reality of black parenting

While dropping his son off at first grade, Sonny Kelly realized that he would have to have “the talk” with his child.

It was April 2015, and Kelly and his son were listening to the news when they heard about the death of Freddie Gray and the protests in Baltimore. Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died from a spinal injury in police custody.

“It kind of fell upon me all at once,” Kelly said. “And I’m looking into my rearview mirror, and I’ve got to explain to this 7-year-old what it means to be black in America.”

Kelly said that explaining to his son that some people would only ever see him as a black boy and that he would be judged based upon his race was a traumatic experience. As a Ph.D. student in communication and performance studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kelly said he decided to turn the experience into his art and research.

Kelly searched through archives of conversations from the past hundred years to create a performance called “The Talk.” The one-man show incorporates literature, including works written by Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, along with Kelly’s personal experiences and reflections. Kelly plays around 22 characters in the performance, he said.

Kelly will perform “The Talk” in Syracuse University’s Grant Auditorium from 6:30-9:00 p.m. on Tuesday. The show centers around the difficult conversation that parents must have with their children about racism and intolerance in America.

“Many people think of ‘the talk’ as the conversation parents have about sex and sexuality and the birds and the bees,” Kelly said. “But with the black community in America especially, ‘the talk’ has risen to the level of genre or the level of custom — a cultural custom — whereby we prepare our kids to live in a racialized world where they are going to be judged by the color of their skin, by their racial identification.”

Sonny Kelly performed “The Talk” for the first time in March 2018 at the University of North Carolina: Chapel Hill, where he is a PhD student. He spent two years doing research for the performance. Courtesy of Huth Photography

Elisa Dekaney, an associate dean in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, saw Kelly perform “The Talk” at the ACCelerate Creativity and Innovation Festival. After seeing his performance, she wanted to bring Kelly’s work to SU, she said.

“I think when we all come to a performance like Sonny Kelly’s ‘The Talk,’ we are challenged to look at ourselves, to look at who we are and where we fit into society in relationship to others,” Dekaney said. “And in understanding the situation of others, perhaps we will develop an understanding, the ability to discern [and] the ability to get rid of some misconceptions and prejudice that we all carry.”

“The Talk” is an event created in connection with SU’s 35th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. James Haywood Rolling Jr., VPA’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion and an organizer of the event, said the content of “The Talk” fits in with the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

“Martin Luther King Jr. was one of those who said that you can’t have a nation that’s called a democracy and sweep the needs and pain and the struggles of one huge segment of the population under the rug and pretend that it’s not really happening,” Rolling said.

A talkback session will follow the performance, giving audience members the opportunity to give their own thoughts and experiences. The purpose of “The Talk” is to generate long-term dialogue that continues after the event is over, Rolling said.

“This kind of presentation is about taking a common conversation in the families of persons of color and putting it out front and center so people can sort of see how difficult it is to navigate life when you have these kinds of injustices taking place on a regular basis,” Rolling said.