Watch this mini-review on TikTok or Instagram

I think a lot about the complexity of life in general and more specifically, in our individual lives. You’re a multitude. I’m a multitude. But somehow we all fit here – with all of our ideas and our experiences. If you think about it, no one is really as they seem. You can only really describe me in a flat, almost two dimensional way. I’m a woman, I’m black, I live in New York, I started Black Star Reviews. This doesn’t even come close to describing all of me but I can’t blame you. How would you know? Like They Do in the Movies, Laurence Fishburne’s one man show at PAC NYC, he takes us inside of himself – past his sequined onesie, below the skin, and into the core of his being. He is only speaking as himself for a small portion of the show and the rest is his retelling of stories other people have told him. He was the original audience – so we are him, and he is character. A person he met along the way.

There’s the two dimensional: an black expat brothel owner in Australia

and the multi dimensional: he was driven out of the US by racism, is well-versed in geopolitical dynamics, married a sex worker, and opened the aforementioned brothel with her.

Our lives are defined by our time here and the gap we leave when we’re gone – as such, the show also addresses death and near death. When we reach the deepest part of Mr. Fishburne, we’re able to see the vein of connection between all of the vignettes: here stands a black man, a master story teller, trying to make sense of his accomplishments, his pain, and his formative experiences on the stage. As this one man fills the stage with his multitudes, the audience becomes infinitely more aware of the pain and possibility we each possess.