Reality theater: a profile of Sarah Jones.

• Author: Wright, Kai

Ghetto daffodils: That's what Sarah Jones sees. Some people walk through neighborhoods like Manhattan's Washington Heights, populated by poor Dominican migrants in gloomy high-rises, and they see blight. Jones instead notices people like Yajaira Hernandez, one of a kaleidoscope of characters she conjures in her latest one-woman show, Bridge & Tunnel.

Yajaira is a fifteen-year-old, first generation immigrant from the D.R. On stage Jones morphs into the young woman, with a fast-talking Dominican accent and gum-popping bounce. The show is a fantasy open mic night in Queens, and Yajaira recites a poem. "The name of it is called Midnight in Harlem Feels Like Noon," Yajaira begins, haltingly, trying to wrap her multilingual tongue around the King's rigid English. "I know the title is a little bit esoterical. But you can just like take it home with you and just ruminate." midnight ghetto daffodil like the ones in the poems about Spring, right? Nah ... she dips and sways with breezes bullet raindrops forecast for her red-brick hi-rise is mostly crowded....

Jones has the sort of textured love affair with urban environs that we rarely see today. Because of her style--a character artist doing poignant, comedic skits--many compare her work to that of people like Lily Tomlin and early Whoopi Goldberg. She shares their sharp progressive wit and is making a name for herself as heir to their feminist performance-art thrones. But what's most striking about Jones is her romance with unvarnished urbanity--an appreciation for fully human portraits of city life, warts and beauty marks alike, that is more commonly associated with artists like Spike Lee and Richard Pryor.

Jones abandons progressive pathos for honest humanity. We are meant to laugh at the immigrants and black folks she portrays as often as we cry for them. From their accents and their bungled English to their often off-kilter understanding of American culture, her characters represent the hodgepodge of sights and sounds that make up a place as diverse as Queens. "There are some people who cringe as soon as I start speaking because their context on accents on all immigrant is negative," says Jones, rifting in her own rapid-fire diction. "What a terrible thing that we've been conditioned to immediately respond to certain people's accents as demeaning or embarrassing. As the kid of a family that has immigrants in it, I know there's a long history of people saying, 'Get rid of your accent'--well...