I feel that I need to address the elephant in the room. In the few months I have seen several plays written, directed and acted by people of color. The elephant in the room, you need to ask? Well, in almost all instances the audience has been majority white, in one case all white. If you read my last blog post you will know already that I wasn't impressed with Jackie Sibbeles Drury's "Fairview" which specifically took aim at this phenomena by breaking the 4th wall and commanding the mostly white members of the audience to change places with the black actors on stage to their supposed discomfort. This actually had the opposite of the intended effect on me. I was just annoyed as the play I felt was just not good and the the playwright and her (white) director were challenging me, in effect saying that if I thought the play was bad it was only because as I, as a white person, didn't "get" the black experience.
But as Aeshea Harris's "Is God Is" made me cringe in my whiteness so did Antoinette Nwandu's "Pass Over" which I just saw at the Claire Tow theatre at Lincoln Center. If, after either of these plays, the stage lights had been turned on the predominantly white audience I would have been turned to stone. The Steppenwolf production of "Pass Over," here directed by Danya Taymor, caught the eye of Spike Lee who directed a filmed version now streaming on Amazon Prime. But I expect the filmed version is missing the immediacy of the theatrical production. Two youngish black men trapped on their street for eternity (how could one not reference Beckett) by the gangs on one side and the police on the other. A white actor represents both the police and that do-goody white liberal(until he is not) offering them comfort and the possibility of an out. Could he be us? It's terrifying. Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood are both achingly good as Moses and Kitch. But how can we as white, middle class, educated possibly really understand. Seriously.
How can this problem be addressed? The New York theatre-going audience is primarily made up of white, middle class liberals like me but more and more of the plays presented off-Broadway are being written, acted and directed by people of color. What does it feel like for them presenting a play about their experiences as such to an audience that is a sea of pale faces? Do they wonder if we are even getting it? I don't know what the answer is.
