POLITICAL THEATER
by Jason Loewith on 6/21/2007 02:17:00 PM 

Last night I had the opportunity to be part of a panel on Political Theater at the Cultural Center, sponsored by the folks at Stage Left. Stage Left is a small non-Equity company in Lakeview, and we share with them a dedication to plays that raise questions about important social issues... so I was happy to do it.



Also on the panel were Stage Left playwright David Alan Thompson, Congo Square Theatre Executive Director Erin Gilbert, and Teatro Luna co-Artistic Director Tanya Saracho. The Q&A that followed was surprisingly provocative and heated, especially when questions about race and theater came up. As you may know, Congo Square is one of the city's youngest, finest companies that consistently presents plays written by African-Americans, and Teatro Luna is particularly interested in plays written by and for Latinas.



Teatro Luna's cast of S-E-X Oh!



Two questions were surprising in different ways. The first questioner wanted to know why our theaters - and in particular Congo Square and Teatro Luna - didn't produce plays with "universal themes like love or family", and the second questioner wanted to know what Congo Square was doing to push black audiences to traditionally white theaters. Behind their questions were very disturbing views about the racial divide in America.



What lay behind their questions? In the first case, the questioner (a white woman) clearly felt excluded by Congo Square's programming. She had never been to one of their productions (Erin pointed out that their audiences are now 65% caucasian), but clearly believed that a play produced by Congo Square would have universal themes, or that she could see herself in a "black play."

Congo Square's production of Seven Guitars.


The second questioner (a white man) seemed to feel Congo Square, because of its commitment to providing an outlet for underserved artists and audiences, was somehow embracing a separatist mission. He seemed to believe that a place like Victory Gardens (which recently produced a work by Athol Fugard, a white South African writer who has been concerned with race all his professional life) provided a perfectly legitimate outlet for African-American artists and audiences; so why does Congo Square need to do their own thing?



What struck me about the panel afterward was that, even among our enlightened theater audiences in Chicagoland, there is still so much fear and just plain ignorance when it comes to questions of race. And that's what makes it so important for a company like the Goodman to embrace the plays of African-American August Wilson, or for us at Next to produce works by African-Americans Suzan-Lori Parks, Dael Orlandersmith or Lynn Nottage. Even if we can't get as much as an African-American audience in for those plays as we want, we're obviously creating an important dialogue for our white audience, too... they're coming to learn, hopefully, that all the plays we choose have universal themes, no matter the race of their writer.


Next Theatre's production of Fabulation: Or the Re-education of Undine, by Lynn Nottage


The conversation that ensued was spirited and lively, to be sure. You can watch the panel and the questions on CAN-TV 21 on Friday, June 22 at 1:30pm, and again on Saturday, June 23 at 3pm. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Labels: Chicago theatre

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