First Listening

By Chris Moore
Staff Writer

Custom 
Fast
Artist Direct Records
Rating: 7

Custom’s debut album, Fast, has received loads of media attention for his scandalous first video, “Hey Mister.” MTV banned it for having too much sexual content, proving once again that the network doesn’t give a damn about anything but image. It’s decent music, though. Custom’s lyrics are original, controversial and sometimes even intelligent – something that’s lacking in most mainstream music.
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If you saw or heard it, read about it here. Unless you saw or heard it on “Pee Wee Herman in the Garden of Good and Evil.”
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Finally, the national crisis is over. No, it’s not the conflict in the Middle East, nor is it the nation’s economic woes. This is far more important.
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Come one, come all to the greatest show in Morgantown, the amazing orgy of sound that is the Argument.
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If you have nothing to do on Sunday but study for class, put those books down and head out to 123 Pleasant St. for some rock ‘n’ roll.
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At 7:50 p.m. in the Vivian Davis Michael Laboratory Theatre, Miriam Waters (played by Nina Domingue) is frantically searching for a map. She is walking from the back of the room towards the stage, stopping along the way to peruse the aisles and feel under the seats of audience members for her lost guide. More specifically, though, she is looking for direction, which is something that ultimately all nine characters in Domingue’s play, Mo Pas Conin… (Quezue Quichause Qu’ Appe Tourmenter), are looking for. 
Domingue, a graduate student in the Department of Theatre and Dance at WVU, is presenting the one-woman show as her thesis this semester. For the past four weeks, she, along with her director Theresa Davis, has been fine-tuning the play for its debut. The end result is a monodrama that is both beautifully written and poignantly performed. 
The idea for the play came to Domingue five years ago, but she just committed her pen to paper a year and a half ago. The title, which is repeated throughout the play, comes from an old Creole song lyric. It translates as “I Do Not Know What It Is That Torments Me So.”
“The play is about black women from New Orleans coming into consciousness — whether culturally, spiritually, in terms of their gender, whatever it is,” says Domingue, “And it’s that moment of coming into consciousness, that’s the torment.” 
Playing the role of one tormented woman would be a difficult enough task. However, Domingue takes on the role of nine contrasting characters, each emotionally complex in her own way. Armed with a limited wardrobe and a multicolored bag, which she keeps different props in, she delves deeply into the psyche of each woman, presenting their pain as if it were her own. 
The voice of reason throughout is an older Creole woman, who the play begins and ends with, named Miriam Waters. In every scene Miriam’s voice can be heard imparting words of wisdom through an overhead speaker at key times in each character’s monologue. Miriam is also the buffer between each character transition.
 The second scene opens to a woman riding a bus. An admitted crackhead, the woman pleads for five minutes with her cousin Evangeline to make a call to child protective services in her defense. Midway through the play, Domingue plays the role of the cousin, also.  
Throughout the play, she is constantly connecting the characters to each other in this manner, playing the role of a mother one minute, then the role of the daughter the next. The way she manages to successfully pull this off and not make it seem corny is one of many examples of her genius as a playwright as well as an actress.
During the performance, which runs slightly over an hour, she also plays the role of a 21-year-old who was molested as a child, a 15-year-old trying to be a good Catholic and a teen-ager trying to hustle her way into college. She also takes on the character of a girl who is dealing with her mother’s suicide and a woman who just found out that her cousin was lynched.
Domingue interacts with the audience on more than one occasion and totally sells every character she is portraying — to say that her show is amazing would be an understatement. And to be able to see an actress of Domingue’s caliber for only $8 is definitely a bargain. Anyone looking for quality entertainment this weekend should go see her show — it is phenomenal. 
Domingue will be performing Mo Pas Conin tonight at 7:30 and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the Vivian Davis Michael Laboratory Theatre at the CAC. Tickets are $8 for students and $10 for the general public, and can be purchased by calling 293-SHOW (7469). Seating is limited, so get your tickets early.