Niceties, A Stage Play
Confrontation on Steroids
By Jeff Jordan
On either side of the stage, the seats are arranged like bleachers like a football field. Between them, the set looks like the office of a long-tenured History professor with stacks of books with bookmarks sticking out of them like cactus leaves. The beverage stand has a machine that allows an actor to make tea on the set. There are a desk and rows of books shelved behind it.
Confrontation on Steroids
By Jeff Jordan
On either side of the stage, the seats are arranged like bleachers like a football field. Between them, the set looks like the office of a long-tenured History professor with stacks of books with bookmarks sticking out of them like cactus leaves. The beverage stand has a machine that allows an actor to make tea on the set. There are a desk and rows of books shelved behind it.
The other wall has the entrance door. On both walls, there are pictures and paintings. The largest of which is a painting of George Washinton. Keeping with the set theme of a well known and accomplished history professor at an elite school, suspended above the set, there are two elaborate chandeliers. We are given abundant clues in the opening dialogue that the year is 2016. It’s the end of the spring semester.
When two actors appeared on the stage, they are introduced to us by some very snappy and informative dialogue. We have a babyboomer white woman, Janine Bosko, and her black female millennial student, Zoe Reed. During a discussion of Zoe’s paper, a severe but congenial disagreement evolves. Janine disagrees with the thesis of Zoe’s paper. Janine sets the boundaries by insisting that any source that ends in dot com is not a primary source. Zoe simply has to go to the library and find the primary sources to prove her thesis.
Zoe’s thesis states that the American revolution was a compromise between the powerful rich and the average person that worked because the understanding did not include the lowest class people in the colonies, black slaves. This argument gets thicker and thicker. Zoe needs a grade of A to get the grade point average she needs to secure the job she wants with an advocacy organization. Janine has her standards, and as much as she admires and desires Zoe to succeed, she won’t bend her rules. The dramatic time clock is set by the due date of the paper, and the remaining time Zoe has to spend developing new sources and rewriting the document. They both admit the kind of evidence Zoe needs will be difficult, if not impossible, to find.
The dialogue becomes far more heated and personal when Zoe talks about how the history we support and are proud of is not really real. She posits that many of the people who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were wealthy, white, male, slave owners. A long-time researcher of this era, Janine agrees with her contention but insists we can’t rewrite history on feelings. We can rewrite history with historical facts. Zoe complains that since most slaves could not read or write, there wouldn’t be any primary material to support what she felt was obvious. Soon it’s Zoe accusing Janine of furthering the cause of white supremacy by denying the black contribution to the success of the Democracy. Janine counters with a more or less dismissive retort that if blacks think they have it bad, look what happened to the American Indian. If you feel this uncomfortable, you’ll have to see the play to understand how bad it can get and how far this conversation, sometimes a battle, can go.
The performance was terrific; the dialogue between the two women as a mastery of dramatic timing and presentation. But I’m not a theater critic, and I don’t want to be. What I’m writing about is how this play brought up to me some contradictory feelings both during the play and after the performance.
My thesis is that it is impossible for an old white man like me, and I believe it’s true of most white people, too understand the black experience. I can see the injustice taking form with the driving while black incidents all the way up to the number of atrocities experienced by black people that are committed by police, gang members and other dangerous environmental conditions that exist in many black communities.
Yes, I can see this for the injustice it is but can really feel it. I could feel it watching this play. I can feel it seeing reports of it on the news. I can feel when I read it in books. But I can get rid of the feeling by just turning the page, switching the channel, or concentrating on my own problems. As my friend Jon said to me after he and his husband went to an aldermanic town hall, “I listened to the black people complaining about the conditions in their neighborhood. We had concerns but just kept quiet. All I had were white people problems.”
We can accept this, and I’m sure our black neighbors will say that they have been saying for over a couple of hundred years. So then where do we meet to discuss race? And how do we start the conversation? My inclination is to realize that I don’t have any answers. Yes, I can go with my black neighbors to the fire and police commission and insist on stricter enforcement of police procedures, such as eliminating racial profiling and examining the policies and rules for using guns. My stepson, Ryan told me, during a discussion of firearms, that if you took a gun out of the holster, you better be ready to use it.
I can support and assist in community watch efforts to let criminals know that if they are going to settle their differences with guns and it’s witnessed, they are going to go to jail. They should be jailed not only for their intended mayhem but the unintended damage to innocent people who suffer from their insanity.
On the other hand, what can I do about job discrimination and indiscrete social shunning? Here’s an area where whites are often could be found guilty, and many of us don’t even know it. We aren’t aware because we really don’t know what it’s like to live as a black person in America.
Looking at the problem from the other side, I can see how black people become so frustrated with our inability to further the status of race relations. Yet it’s challenging to deal with a group of people who have had hope for improvement only to see it fail with a consequence to anybody but them. I don’t understand the derision of the black leaders who aren’t black enough. I’m discouraged by the condemnation of white leaders who make a mistake exposing their lack of knowledge of the Black experience with small and well-intended remarks.
I see some progress in an attempt by white people who posit that we get together and that the white people put all of their we intended solutions on hold and listen, really listen to black people to make progress. If this is going to make things better, let me caution you. I know from personal experience with alcohol that progress is a few steps forward and couple backward. Development is small steps in the wrong direction, followed by an agreement that we have to change course, do something else. Progress is celebrating and moving on to more small steps.
The status of race relations in this country is based on hundreds of years of mistakes, misconceptions, and misery. There is no silver bullet solution. The solution is going to messy and hard to maintain. The payoff for those that pick up the gauntlet is akin to planting a tree. You will have to wait a long time to enjoy the shade. But if you don’t plant a tree and water it there never will be shade.
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater is staging this play until November 3, 2019
https://www.milwaukeerep.com/
When two actors appeared on the stage, they are introduced to us by some very snappy and informative dialogue. We have a babyboomer white woman, Janine Bosko, and her black female millennial student, Zoe Reed. During a discussion of Zoe’s paper, a severe but congenial disagreement evolves. Janine disagrees with the thesis of Zoe’s paper. Janine sets the boundaries by insisting that any source that ends in dot com is not a primary source. Zoe simply has to go to the library and find the primary sources to prove her thesis.
Zoe’s thesis states that the American revolution was a compromise between the powerful rich and the average person that worked because the understanding did not include the lowest class people in the colonies, black slaves. This argument gets thicker and thicker. Zoe needs a grade of A to get the grade point average she needs to secure the job she wants with an advocacy organization. Janine has her standards, and as much as she admires and desires Zoe to succeed, she won’t bend her rules. The dramatic time clock is set by the due date of the paper, and the remaining time Zoe has to spend developing new sources and rewriting the document. They both admit the kind of evidence Zoe needs will be difficult, if not impossible, to find.
The dialogue becomes far more heated and personal when Zoe talks about how the history we support and are proud of is not really real. She posits that many of the people who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were wealthy, white, male, slave owners. A long-time researcher of this era, Janine agrees with her contention but insists we can’t rewrite history on feelings. We can rewrite history with historical facts. Zoe complains that since most slaves could not read or write, there wouldn’t be any primary material to support what she felt was obvious. Soon it’s Zoe accusing Janine of furthering the cause of white supremacy by denying the black contribution to the success of the Democracy. Janine counters with a more or less dismissive retort that if blacks think they have it bad, look what happened to the American Indian. If you feel this uncomfortable, you’ll have to see the play to understand how bad it can get and how far this conversation, sometimes a battle, can go.
The performance was terrific; the dialogue between the two women as a mastery of dramatic timing and presentation. But I’m not a theater critic, and I don’t want to be. What I’m writing about is how this play brought up to me some contradictory feelings both during the play and after the performance.
My thesis is that it is impossible for an old white man like me, and I believe it’s true of most white people, too understand the black experience. I can see the injustice taking form with the driving while black incidents all the way up to the number of atrocities experienced by black people that are committed by police, gang members and other dangerous environmental conditions that exist in many black communities.
Yes, I can see this for the injustice it is but can really feel it. I could feel it watching this play. I can feel it seeing reports of it on the news. I can feel when I read it in books. But I can get rid of the feeling by just turning the page, switching the channel, or concentrating on my own problems. As my friend Jon said to me after he and his husband went to an aldermanic town hall, “I listened to the black people complaining about the conditions in their neighborhood. We had concerns but just kept quiet. All I had were white people problems.”
We can accept this, and I’m sure our black neighbors will say that they have been saying for over a couple of hundred years. So then where do we meet to discuss race? And how do we start the conversation? My inclination is to realize that I don’t have any answers. Yes, I can go with my black neighbors to the fire and police commission and insist on stricter enforcement of police procedures, such as eliminating racial profiling and examining the policies and rules for using guns. My stepson, Ryan told me, during a discussion of firearms, that if you took a gun out of the holster, you better be ready to use it.
I can support and assist in community watch efforts to let criminals know that if they are going to settle their differences with guns and it’s witnessed, they are going to go to jail. They should be jailed not only for their intended mayhem but the unintended damage to innocent people who suffer from their insanity.
On the other hand, what can I do about job discrimination and indiscrete social shunning? Here’s an area where whites are often could be found guilty, and many of us don’t even know it. We aren’t aware because we really don’t know what it’s like to live as a black person in America.
Looking at the problem from the other side, I can see how black people become so frustrated with our inability to further the status of race relations. Yet it’s challenging to deal with a group of people who have had hope for improvement only to see it fail with a consequence to anybody but them. I don’t understand the derision of the black leaders who aren’t black enough. I’m discouraged by the condemnation of white leaders who make a mistake exposing their lack of knowledge of the Black experience with small and well-intended remarks.
I see some progress in an attempt by white people who posit that we get together and that the white people put all of their we intended solutions on hold and listen, really listen to black people to make progress. If this is going to make things better, let me caution you. I know from personal experience with alcohol that progress is a few steps forward and couple backward. Development is small steps in the wrong direction, followed by an agreement that we have to change course, do something else. Progress is celebrating and moving on to more small steps.
The status of race relations in this country is based on hundreds of years of mistakes, misconceptions, and misery. There is no silver bullet solution. The solution is going to messy and hard to maintain. The payoff for those that pick up the gauntlet is akin to planting a tree. You will have to wait a long time to enjoy the shade. But if you don’t plant a tree and water it there never will be shade.
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater is staging this play until November 3, 2019
https://www.milwaukeerep.com/
Did you stay for the post play discussion circle?
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