Displaying items by tag: Jackie Sibblies Drury

I’m going to do my best to not provide any spoilers in my review of “Fairview” the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Jackie Sibblies Drury. It’s going to be hard. Definition Theatre’s production under the direction of Tyrone Phillips will certainly challenge its audience. This production starts in heightened realism, flows into surrealism, runs head on into the absurd before landing a moralistic gut punch. It would be unfair of me to describe the twist, turns and surprises. Everyone should be given a fair view of this excellent production for themselves.

Director Tyrone Phillips has staged “Fairview” as a play within a play. We are introduced to the home of The Frasier Family. It is a nice, if somewhat simple home. The type of home you may find in so many television sit-coms. It becomes obvious the Frasers are middle class African Americans once we meet high anxiety Beverly (Kandice Robins) and her hen-pecked, doting husband Dayton (David Goodloe). They are straight out of central casting, Perfect. If you closed your eyes and just listened to them, you would be hard pressed to guess their race. Yeah…those Black people.

Beverly is preparing a birthday dinner for her mother, the family matriarch, and everything must be perfect because, well, what would people think. As Beverly sits cutting carrots listening to Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” the channel on the radio changes and starts to play the traditional “Happy Birthday Song. It rattles Beverly for a minute, but the music quickly changes back, and she continues her preparation of the dinner as if nothing happened. Her sister, Jasmine (Martasia Jones) arrives with a bottle of rose wine to kick the party off. It is obvious Jasmine is a little more spirited (o.k. she’s ghetto)

than her proper sister. She’s opinionated, gossipy, loud and (well, ghetto.) We next meet Keisha, (Jada Jackson) the teenage daughter any family would want. She has the usual teenage problems but it’s clear she’s very smart and focused.

The family has the usual conversations any middle-class family would have. Beverly is hoping her lawyer brother, Tyrone makes the party. Keisha wants her Aunt Jasmine to ask her mother to allow her to take a gap year after graduation. Dayton is helping his wife as much as he can. Jasmine and Beverly have an on-going rivalry. Beverly gets more anxious as things aren’t going perfectly. When she realizes the cake has burnt she faints, chopped carrots fly everywhere. Lights down!

The lights come halfway up on stage. And for the next five to ten minutes stagehands reset the set. This happens right before our eyes. The genius of Phillips is giving the audience the opportunity to have a conversation while this is going on. Nothing truly remarkable happened in the first act. Its unremarkable nature was, in fact, was quite remarkable. There are going to be some interesting conversations going on during this non-intermission.

The actors start the show from the top, except this time they are doing it in silence. There are two new audience members seated arguably in the best seats in the house. As everyone’s conversation has subsided, these new audience members conversation is just starting. We’ll call the more aggressive White male, Jimbo (Max Stewart) and the more liberal leaning White women, Suze (Barbara Figgins). The topic of Jimbo’s conversation: If you can be any race, what race would you be? Poor guilt-ridden, bleeding-heart Suze is verbally abused by Jimbo. She refuses to answer, she doesn’t want to be wrong for one thing. Next to walk into this conversation is a white man we’ll call Mack (Collin Quinn Rice). He clearly knows what race he wants to be, Latinx, not Latino, Latinx. He practically fetishizes the Latinx. Rounding out this coterie, is European born Bets (Carly Cornelius). Asked the same question, Bets answer is probably the weirdest or rather the most interesting. She eventually comes around.

Initially, this conversation seems to have no bearing on the Frasier family’s affairs, with their prying questions and uneasy answers. I was tempted to disregard the actions on stage for the action happening in the audience. However, as Act ll progresses, the two plotlines converge and interact, creating some of the most hilarious comedy I’ve seen on stage in a very long time.

“Fairview” is an exploration on the white gaze. Writer Jackie Sibblies Drury has let us in on the private thoughts of white people. We get an idea of how people create whole scenarios based solely on race, especially the Black race. They weren’t even listening to The Frasiers. They made up the story to suit their individual biases. Director Phillips has made the “white gaze” an actual gaze done by actual white audience members. We see how matter of factly racist tropes are spewed especially when it’s “just amongst us”. This play is also an exploration in the art of the mindfuck. The Urban Dictionary describes a mindfuck as something to confuse or reshape your thought the way the "mind-fucker" wants you to think. making you question, doubt, or acquire a new set of ideas based on what the perpetrator has told you. Susan Lori Parks did a mindfuck with Topdog/Underdog. By naming her characters Lincoln and Booth, she tells us what is going to happen. Yet we act like we don’t know what will happen. Jackie Sibbles Drury is a bit more sly but equally effective.

This production is excellent. The ensemble was perfect. The Choreography by Jyreika Guest, who was magic in “How Blood Goes” another excellent production, was engaging and fun. Special recognition must go to Props Designer Mariah Bennett (you’ll understand when you see the show). The costumes by Alexandria Richardson ran the gamut from plain to unforgettable.

 Theater should challenge and inspire. Theater should beg you to question and dare you to act. Theatre should teach and enlighten. “Fairview” does all these things and if you have a heart it will move you, and don’t we deserved to be moved…….. ain’t it time!

HIGHLY RECCOMMENDED

When: Through May 28

Where: The Revival, 1160 E. 55^th Street Chicago

Running time: 120 minutes

Tickets: $35

Contact: definitiontheatre.org

You may need several moments to come down after witnessing Steppenwolf’s stunning, let me say truly astounding new production of a play by Jackie Sibblies Drury. This powerful work was ahead of its time when it premiered in 2012 at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre – eventually heading for off-Broadway and recognition in multiple awards, but under appreciated at the time, and neglected afterward. But now perhaps the world is better able to receive it.

It tells the story of a high school class enacting a historical recount of three decades of German occupation of what is now Namibia (formerly Southwest Africa), ending with World War I. It was a period replete with the worst of Colonialism, with land theft, cultural destruction, and a deliberate genocide against the Herero people.

The play’s unlikely long name suggests the earnestness of the students producing it: “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915.” Since there is little written record from anyone but the occupiers, the students begin with letters written home by German soldiers, and incorporating factual details from other records.

As with any production, the student actors seek the motivation of their characters, and the roles they play. They tell fundamentals like geography and language in a lighthearted engaging way, capturing the audience. As the story progresses, though, and the German government asserts increasingly stringent control, the students must act out cruel and even violent behavior – and they begin to resist. Learning 80 percent of the Herero men were killed in this period, students are overwhelmed and do not want to re-enact the scenes.

"We're talking about a rehearsal for the Holocaust," says one student, horrified. But another corrects him. "It wasn't a rehearsal," he says. 

Yet their teacher pushes them on, beyond the brink, to unbearable acts and emotions, and the audience moves with them. The performances by the cast show real stars on the rise: Will Allan (Actor 3/Another White Man), Terry Bell (Actor 2/Black Man), Taylor Blim (Actor 5/Sarah), Jeffrey Owen Freelon Jr. (Actor 4/Another Black Man) Michael Holding (Actor 1/White Man), and Jennifer Latimore (Actor 6/Black Woman). The performances of Allen, Freelon, Holding, Bell and Blim blew me away, their parts demanding extreme versatility, or in the case of Bell, deep emotion and sentiment.

Playwright Drury gives us a concatenation of the inhumane treatment of tribes by the occupying army in Africa, to the treatment of African-Americans under Jim Crow. These scenes are especially unsettling, and we are reminded of the consequences of laying waste to the social mores that keep us civilized. With social movements like Black Lives Matter, #Oscarssowhite, and following Charlotte and NFL protests, the public at large may be better able to understand this aspect of the play - but it is gut wrenching.

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… is a consequential work of art, reminiscent of Master Harold & The Boys and Miss Margarita’s Way, which similarly trace the seemingly inevitable power of sinister social forces. Director Hallie Gordon (she co-directed it with Gabrielle Randle) says to reconstitute the account of the tribal people, the production called on the work of Toni Morrison and others who employ "critical fabulation" to reconstitute histories of lost peoples, as well as existentialists like Brecht and or Beckett.

This production of We Are Proud to Present a Presentation is aimed at young audiences and will tour schools and Park Districts after it closes on Halsted. It is without question serious material, and an important production for everyone - the opportunity to see it should not be missed. It comes highly recommended, and runs only through March 23 at Steppenwolf Theatre.