“Incognito” runs skin deep

By: Kyle Christensen
Features Editor

It took only seven chairs, a tabletop and the open stage of the Kasch Performance Hall in the Dahl Chapel and Auditorium for a single man to recount more than three decades worth of personal revelations and growth that have shaped the very core of his identity today. In a world where outer appearance plays such a key role in how we, as human beings, interact with one another, Michael Fosberg stood in front of an auditorium of spectators on Sept. 12 and dared to question this very conception of human nature, tackling the issue of race as a method of self-construction with his critically acclaimed one-man show “Incognito.”

A performer/writer and native of Waukegan, Ill., Fosberg was in his early 30s living in the San Fernando Valley when his parents (his mother and her second husband, his stepfather) announced they were dissolving their marriage. As a strange emotional void crept up into his life, Fosberg was encouraged by a close girlfriend to pursue a difficult goal he had always contemplated, yet never accomplished: to find his biological father. Fosberg said, “It’s as if I were a jigsaw puzzle and there was this one piece missing, and it may not have been a significant piece, but I needed it to complete the picture.”

With very little information to aid in his investigation (besides a simple name and a possible Detroit location of residency), Fosberg was able to locate a phone directory book for that area and began his search to meet the elusive “John Sydney Woods.” It was not a long process at all, after the very first call made brought Fosberg in a verbal encounter with a deep baritone voice that, after a quick series of nervous interrogative questions, was indeed revealed to belong to his long-lost father. But a new discovery would await Fosberg in that pivotal conversation; his father revealed he was African-American with a very light skin pigment that had only faintly transferred onto his son.

Raised by a Caucasian mother, Fosberg stated, “I went from growing up in a white middleclass family to being a black man in the blink of an eye.”

While Fosberg jokingly claimed that this explained his affinity for James Browne music, his memorization of famous Richard Pryor stand-up routines and a well-groomed afro he kept throughout high school, it also opened up an entire new side to his life, with an assortment of emerging relatives broadening the scope of his individuality.

While visiting his new grandparents in Virginia Beach, Fosberg met his father face-to-face and learned of his rich progressive ancestry, including a veteran from the Civil War’s first black regiment and a celebrated professional baseball pitcher. A package from his grandmother of one of his baby shoes and a photograph of him as an infant sitting on her lap made Fosberg realize his ultimate connection to this group of dark-skinned strangers that he would come to accept as his family.

Sadly, troubles of the past rose to fruition upon realizing the struggles which had existed between his mother and father over whether he would be “raised Negro” or not. Soon afterward, a specific outing with a cousin at the Inkwell, a popular resort shoreline for African Americans in Martha’s Vineyard, made the insecure Fosberg further question his role in society, as the pressures and complexities associated with racial stigma started to take their toll.

“What race am I? Am I black? Am I white?” Fosberg pondered and then directly addressed his audience by unabashedly asking, “Did you know when you first saw me?”

With time and pensive reflection, Fosberg has come to accept himself as he is, regardless of mere ethnicity. “I was not raised black. I did not survive the ‘black experience’…does that make me any less of a black man?” Fosberg declared.

After completing a nation- wide journey from the West Coast to East Coast, as part of a mission to interview distant family members and complete an autobiographical work of his rare evolution, Fosberg began performing his one-act show in February 2000, and can be seen at the Illinois Theatre Center in Park Forest beginning on Jan. 5, 2007. Fosberg recently completed the novelization of his riveting story, expected to reach stores by the end of next summer.

Through his art, Fosberg’s essential message thrives: “I am more than a label, more than a race. I’m a [person] with two heritages.”