Review: (Montreal) The Meeting

About MLK and Malcolm…
by Aleksandra Koplik

What if Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X sat down and had a conversation? What would be the outcome or consensus? Written by Jeff Stetson and directed by Quincy Armorer, Black Theatre Workshop presents The Meeting. It’s a play that addresses such timeless issues as racism, poverty and discrimination. 

Fade in. The audience sees a sleeping Malcolm X (Lindsay Owen Pierre), he is awoken by his bodyguard Rashad (Kareem Tristan Alleyne). X’s house has just been bombed and his thirst for change has never been greater. He awakes from a nightmare and almost immediately greets Martin Luther King Jr. (Christian Paul).  We are introduced to two completely different standpoints on racism. The two are different in almost every way possible:

King is Christian. He was a Baptist reverend.

X is Muslim (who knew!?).  He converted from the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam and became a minister.

King wants to make change through love. He believes there is no hate with love.

X pushes for change through force. He is certain that people don’t understand love, they understand action.

The Abominable Showman, February 20, 2014

What if Dr Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had sat down and had it out? 
Black Theatre Workshop imagines what could have been, in The Meeting …

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

Their meeting is famous: March 26, 1964, the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X shook hands in front of the Washington press corps outside the U.S. Senate Caucus Room on Capitol Hill.

Malcolm – who once called King “Rev. Dr. Chicken-wing” – stepped out of the crowd, blocked Dr. King’s path, extended his hand and smiled.

“Well, Malcolm, good to see you,” King said, shaking Malcolm X’s hand.

That meeting almost 50 years ago lasted only a minute. 

But what if it had lasted an hour?