Five men command the stage, each representing the role of the black man in five unique ways.

the making of the black man, written and directed by sean360x, presents prose, lyrics, beats and movement to tell the story of these men.

The central hinge of the piece is a character who calls himself blacque, a man dressed in black, who moves with fluidity and sings with clarity, and at times slinks across the stage holding a mask to his face. He expresses the voice of the past, one that has lost his children, with each generation looking less and less like him. braun portrays an educated professional, uniformed in a suit as he struggles to break through the glass ceiling. He is ashamed of his compatriots, bleu, blanco and red, whose greatest pleasure comes from hanging on the corner, rolling and smoking blunts. In return, these three look down upon braun, who insists that he is not black but brown; American, not African-American. Ultimately it is blacque’s voice from forgotten times that breaks them free from their stereotypes, reuniting the five men into brotherhood.

The dialogue is broken up by movements, clapping and stomping that are satisfyingly simple and clean, and by music that rings of melancholy. Five stereotypes have been plucked and presented as very real characters.