Displaying items by tag: Cecilie Keenan

Invisible, a new play by Mary Bonnett, tells a provocative story about a little known slice of history – the emergence of the women’s arm of the Ku Klux Klan – the WKKK. Bonnett is also artistic director of Her Story Theater, and has produced eight such works with powerful social messages.

Directed by Cecelie Keenan, Invisible (the KKK was known as the "Invisible Nation") is set in 1920 in Mound, Mississippi (a site of a native burial grounds). It centers on a trio of ladies - Doris, Lucinda, and Mabel - who are marketing Women’s KKK memberships through the social media of the day – door to door solicitation, marches, and nasty gossip about those who won’t join.

The poisonous dynamics are reminiscent of the ominous thumb of group-think social pressure seen in The Crucible, or Tracy Letts' The Minutes, but with a Southern drawl. Starting from a baseline of racism against African-Americans, the WKKK ladies of the 1920s welcomed only Protestant Northern Europeans and Anglo Saxons to their group.

Those who were unreceptive were shunned socially. Pro-scripted categories of white people – Catholics, Jews, immigrants – weren’t even approached, and along with black people, were targets of venomous attacks by the women’s group.

Interested in reducing marital violence and advancing education, these women were liberated on some levels. They had won the vote in 1920, and voiced ambition for loosening male dominion over political power. But this was restricted to advancing the fortunes of nice, Christian, white ladies like themselves. (Historically the group got the Texas Schoolboard to prohibit hiring Catholics as teachers.) Like the KKK, the women were nativists, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic, organizing “Poison Squads” to denigrate enemies, and boycott immigrant-owned businesses.

“I hate talking this way,” says Lucinda before launching into another specious character assassination. “I really am a good person.”

The Ku Klux Klan issued the ladies’ chapters an organizing handbook, and Lucinda Davis (Barbara Roeder Harris) reads its advisories to her daughter-in-law Doris Davis (Megan Kaminsky), and Mabel Carson (Morgan Laurel Cohen) in planning sessions. Memberships in the WKKK are $10, which covers the cost of the robe and hood.

Mabel, the protagonist in the play, is an aspiring officer in the Mound chapter of the ladies KKK, encouraged by her husband, Tom Carson (Brad Harbaugh) into joining to advance the fortunes of their general store. An outsider, Mabel comes from Missouri (a Union state in the Civil War). As she witnesses Lucretia and Doris abuse David Stein (Richard Cotovsky), a Jewish reporter from the Chicago Tribune, Mabel pushes back, but only so far.

“Since when did we become so inhospitable to strangers?” she asks.
“Since these Jews and immigrants started taking over our country,” Lucinda replies venomously, pressuring Mabel until she turns Stein out in the night.

The performances and production values are good, with sets by Kevin Rolfs and costumes by Shelbi Wilkin. Mabel and Tom are a convincing couple with good chemistry. Harbaugh registers Tom’s pain convincingly, though Cohen’s conflicted Mabel cries so often that even the script calls it out.

The play is burdened with a subplot that seems forced, to presumably to add a dramatic structure to Invisible. Likewise some questionable subplots are forced into the mix.

For example, Stein is driven into the swamp where he is rescued by the mysterious 11 year old Ghost Girl (Maddy Fleming is quite good in her role). She brings him to her foster home on a prehistoric Indian Mound where she lives with Jubal (Lisa McConnell offers a boisterous performance).

The one person of color in this show, exotic, exuberant multi-ethnic Jubal, a former Chicago artist and sideshow performer, is the lone complainant about Klan-led injustice to black people – drumming and shouting in protest as corpses from lynchings pile up on the mound near her home. When Tom Carson tells her she will go to hell for her behavior, she drawls, “I am in hell, Master Tom – I lives in Mississippi!”

Jubal later convinces the reporter Stein to pitch a story about lynchings, and the Tribune agrees to cover it. A worthy endeavor, but a distraction from Invisible’s main story.
Nevertheless the performances are good, and the fundamental storyline strong enough to overcome these diversions. Bonnett’s works for Her Story Theater are aimed at “shining a light on women and children in need of social justice and community support.”

Invisible is intriguing, with its anti-immigrant tones resonating strongly today. And it shows how easily a woman can pressured socially down a perfidious path. But in highlighting the struggle of the protagonist Mabel amidst the racial depradations of the Klan against black people, the script indirectly conjures up another contemporary struggle – toxic white feminism. It's recommended. Invisible runs through November 3, 2019 at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont in Chicago.