this week in theater

LINES IN THE DUST

Melissa Joyner stars as a mother willing to do just about anything to get her daughter a better education in Lines in the Dust

LINES IN THE DUST
New Normal Rep
Available on demand through August 8, $25
www.newnormalrep.org

In his 1963 inaugural address upon being sworn in as governor of Alabama, Democrat George Wallace declared, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”

Actress and playwright Nikkole Salter uses part of that quote for the title of her potent three-character work about racism, residential districting, and school residency fraud, Lines in the Dust, streaming through August 8 in a potent virtual version from New Normal Rep. The 110-minute play feels like it was written yesterday, but it actually debuted at Luna Stage in New Jersey in 2014. In a short video about the world premiere, Salter explained, “I think we’re at a critical moment of national reflection,” referring specifically to the sixtieth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that declared school segregation unconstitutional. She continues, “This play becomes poignant now because we find ourselves as segregated, if not more segregated in certain places, than we were in 1954 when we look at our education system.” Among the many difficult lessons we’ve learned since March 2020 is that America still has a major segregation problem in education, among other institutions, amid another critical moment of national reflection.

The play begins in the spring of 2009 at an open house in Millburn, New Jersey, where Dr. Beverly Long (Lisa Rosetta Strum), the married mother of a teenage son, and Denitra Morgan (Melissa Joyner), the single mother of a teenage daughter, are talking about the local district. “If you want a good school, you have to pay property taxes or private school tuition, pick your poison. I say, at least with the former, you get some equity,” Beverly explains. “Gotta pay if you wanna play,” Denitra replies. Beverly: “At least we can. Imagine if we were stuck in other, worser — if we couldn’t afford to pay —” Denitra: “Yeah.” Beverly: “I don’t know what those parents do. ‘Hope’ it works out? Pray?” Denitra: “Beg, borrow, lie; they’ll cheat their way into . . .” Beverly: “Of course they do. Wouldn’t you?” Denitra: “Yeah, I guess I would.” Beverly: “I definitely would. What parent wouldn’t?”

Lisa Rosetta Strum, Melissa Joyner, and Jeffrey Bean star in New Normal Rep’s potent virtual production of Nikkole Salter’s Lines in the Dust

A year and a half later, Beverly is the interim principal at a prestigious public high school in Essex County, where Denitra is illegally sending her daughter, Noelle, since they can’t afford to live in that district. In her office, Dr. Long meets with Michael DiMaggio (Jeffrey Bean), a private investigator hired by the board to weed out these illegal students, seeking to expel them and make their family pay restitution. A thirty-five-year veteran of the Millburn Police Department, DiMaggio doesn’t exactly hide his racism and anti-Semitism, determined to rid the school of these unwelcome elements, using dog-whistle phrases that he insists are not biased, claiming merely to be following the law. While Dr. Long is uncomfortable with his language, methods, and personal beliefs, she also wants to keep her job, so she attempts to find that line in the dust, especially when DiMaggio starts going after Denitra and Noelle.

Preparing a slide presentation for the board, DiMaggio gives Dr. Long an advance run-through. “Now, you’ve got a good thing goin’ here in Millburn,” he states. “And I tell ya, they’re gonna come and try and take it.
It’s easier to take than to build your own. I ask you, are you gonna take this opportunity to do everything you can to fight to keep Millburn? Or are you going to let it go to a bunch of people who don’t even live here? The choice is yours.” It is clear who that “bunch of people” are, but the interim principal is worried about criticizing the PI, concerned about her position at the school and conscious of her responsibility to the Black community.

She tells DiMaggio, “We all should be concerned about the future of our schools. But what I don’t think we should feel is afraid. And right now, those pictures, they make me feel like you want me to be afraid —” “No —,” DiMaggio begins, but Dr. Long cuts him off. “Afraid in a very specific way. The images are very —” DiMaggio: “I’m not trying to scare anybody.” Dr. Long: “They’re very biased.” DiMaggio: “You think I’m biased?” No, I didn’t say you — I think the pictures you chose, and how you present them, create a very biased look —” DiMaggio: “These are real pictures.” Dr. Long: “I’m sure, but the way you present them —” DiMaggio: “What way? In a slide show?” Dr. Long: “No. Back to back and in juxtaposition to — it makes it seem as if the thing they should be afraid of is the ghetto.” DiMaggio: “Yeah.” Dr. Long: “Yeah?” DiMaggio: “Aren’t you afraid of that?” Dr. Long: “Excuse me?” The battle comes to a head as DiMaggio starts following Noelle and the official presentation approaches.

Lines in the Dust was directed over Zoom by Awoye Timpo (The Loophole), with multimedia green-screen design by Afsoon Pajoufar, taking us from the open house to Dr. Long’s office to Denitra’s home, with costumes by Qween Jean, sound by Stan Mathabane, and original music by Alphonso Horne. The cast is outstanding, led by Joyner’s (Maids Door, Mrs. America) heart-wrenching turn as Denitra, a woman willing to go to extreme lengths to get her daughter a quality education that can make a difference in her future. You can feel her desperation even though watching her performance on a computer. Strum (Pipeline, the solo project She Gon’ Learn) portrays Beverly’s painful dilemma with poise and self-assurance, while Bean (The Thanksgiving Play, About Alice) brings an understated refinement to DiMaggio, a white man who represents so much of what is wrong with the current system.

Salter — an award-winning playwright and actress who wrote Here We Are and starred in Lydia R. Diamond’s Whitely Negotiations for the extraordinary two-way “Here We Are” solo theater project held online during the pandemic lockdown — was partly inspired by the career of onetime Newark resident, NAACP lawyer, and federal judge Robert L. Carter, which included work on such cases as Sweatt v. Painter, in which Heman Marion Sweatt sued the University of Texas Law School in 1950 because he was rejected for being Black, and Brown v. Board of Education. The play gets to the emotional core of such legal precedents, focusing on the human element. It all feels particularly pertinent in 2021 in regard to ongoing arguments across the US about teaching critical race theory in schools and the battle over voting rights. Somewhere up there, Wallace is smirking down on all of us.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: CROSSOVERS LIVE! WITH BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL

Who: Brian Stokes Mitchell, Vanessa Williams, Daniel J. Watts, Marc Shaiman, Bernadette Peters, Kristin Chenoweth, David Hyde Pierce, more
What: Ticket giveaway for Crossovers Live! with Brian Stokes Mitchell
Where: Stellar
When: Premiering monthly July 26 – December 20, $15-$100 per show, six-show bundle $49-$500; use code BBS10 to save $10 on any six-show bundle through July 21 (benefiting the Actors Fund)
Why: Brian Stokes Mitchell was already a Broadway and television star when he reached a new stratosphere of fame for his nightly renditions of “The Impossible Dream” early in the 2020 pandemic lockdown in New York City. Delivered from the window of his Upper West Side apartment after the 7:00 pm clap for health-care workers, Stokes’s performances were part of his vocal retraining after a serious bout with Covid-19. He sang one of the hit songs from Man of La Mancha, a show that earned him a 2003 Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical, an award he had won in 2000 for Kiss Me Kate. The Seattle-born Mitchell, who has appeared in such other Broadway musicals as Jelly’s Last Jam, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Ragtime and such TV series as Mr. Robot, Glee, and Trapper John, M.D. (in addition to a ton of voiceovers on animated programs), is now hosting his own online talk show, Crossovers Live!, which will stream live monthly July through December and be available on demand for a limited time.

In a promotional video, Mitchell — who has also been nominated for a Grammy, formed Black Theatre United in June 2020 with Audra McDonald, LaChanze, Billy Porter, Anna Deavere Smith, and others, and received the key to the city for his extensive work during the coronavirus crisis as chairman of the board of the Actors Fund — asks, “Do you like movies? TV shows? Miniseries? How about theater? Do you like theater? Like, really like theater? Do you like any medium that actors, composers, singers, writers, dancers could be on? We asked Vanessa Williams, Marc Shaiman, Bernadette Peters, Kristin Chenoweth, David Hyde Pierce, and more to talk about crossing over from stage to screen. And they all accepted because they love audiences, and audiences love them, and we all just love each other. You get it.” The show premieres July 26 with Williams (Soul Food, Kiss of the Spider Woman) and Daniel J. Watts (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, The Last O.G.), followed August 30 with composer Shaiman (Hairspray, Mary Poppins Returns), September 27 with Peters (Annie Get Your Gun, The Jerk), October 25 with Chenoweth (Wicked, Glee), November 22 with Hyde Pierce (Spamalot, Fraser), and December 20 with a Holiday Finale. A minimum of ten percent of the net proceeds will benefit the Actors Fund.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets for Crossovers Live! with Brian Stokes Mitchell are $15 each, $25 for the show and access to the VIP chat room, and $100 for the Super VIP Livestream, which adds in signed merchandise. The six-show bundle is $49/$99/$500.

However, twi-ny is giving away two standard six-show bundles ($49) and one VIP bundle ($99) for free. In order to be eligible, you must like Crossovers Live! on Facebook and Instagram and, in addition, send your name, phone number, and favorite play, television show, or movie with Brian Stokes Mitchell in it to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, July 22, at 3:00 pm. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random. As Mitchell sings, “And the world will be better for this / Oh, that one man, scorned and covered with scars / Still strong with his last ounce of courage / To reach the unreachable, the unreachable / The unreachable star.”

RIDE SHARE

Marcus (Kamal Angelo Bolden) is on a dangerous road in Writers Theatre’s Ride Share

RIDE SHARE
Writers Theatre
Through July 25, $40-$100
Live Zoom talkback July 25 at 4:00
www.writerstheatre.org
www.blacklivesblackwords.org

“I hate my life,” Marcus (Kamal Angelo Bolden) says early on in the virtual one-man show Ride Share, a psychological thriller streaming from Chicago’s Writers Theatre through July 25.

Marcus believed he was on the right road, doing everything correctly. The thirty-three-year-old Black man had just married a lovely woman, Joselyn, at an $85,000 wedding and returned from their honeymoon in Aruba imagining only brightness in his future. He gets called in to work, expecting to be made partner after having put in twelve dedicated, difficult years. Instead, Craig, a white Yale grad who married the boss’s niece, informs Marcus that he is being laid off. “He tells me that I should . . . count this as a blessing, this leaves your path wide open for a great adventure ahead of you. Oh, and by the way, there’s a box waiting for [you] at the front desk.”

Devastated and desperate for money, Marcus becomes a driver for every ride-share company he can find. He shuttles passengers around Chicago in his white Kia from four to ten every morning and again from seven at night till past midnight, jeopardizing his relationship not only with his new wife but with his sanity. Standing atop his car, he details his preoccupation with his rating, like a day trader or a compulsive gambler:

“From the start, ratings have been the bane of my existence. In three months, I’ve earned the ranking of a platinum-level driver. I’ve driven 647 trips with a rating of 4.9, with 629 five-star reviews, 10 four-stars, 4 three-stars, 3 two-stars, and 1 one-star review. I watch these ratings like a hawk. It’s gotten so bad that now I tell people I’m gonna give them five stars in hopes that they do the same. I check these ratings after every ride. I check them again before I go to bed; my wife thinks that I’m obsessed with these ratings. She says, ‘You pay more attention to your ratings than you do to me.” I say, ‘Well, you’re not gonna downgrade me from platinum to blue. She laughed and then she said, ‘You better be careful because your ratings aren’t the only things that could turn blue.’ I love her so much. She’s my everything.”

He spends his down time trying to create better opportunities, learning Spanish by listening to Latin music and hanging out with the other drivers at the airport. “All of us waiting. Waiting for just one ride. Waiting to control our own destinies, waiting on the America dream, waiting.” As his disdain for his passengers grows, particularly for snarky businesspeople and young white women, so does information about a new disease, Covid-19. Then fate steps in when Craig enters his vehicle and Marcus admits to himself that he always has an additional passenger sitting next to him, which he calls his dark rider. “No one can see him but me, our eyes lock, ten generations of rage staring back at me, his mouth gaping wide, uttering nothing but yet I hear his whispers,” he says. Suddenly the road ahead is filled with sin and temptation.

Written by Reginald Edmund and directed by Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway, the cofounders of the activist Black Lives, Black Words International Project, Ride Share, part of BLBW’s Plays for the People series, is a tense and uneasy journey into the mind of a man who has been rejected by a society that refuses to see him for who he is as an individual, as a unique human being. When seen at all, he is judged by the color of his skin and the type of car he drives, representations of systemic racism and income inequality. Bolden (Jitney, Detroit ’67) effectively captures the angst and fear that so many Black men and other people of color have felt so acutely over the last sixteen months (not to mention the decades before), during a pandemic that has led to isolation and economic hardship, as well as a reckoning for racial injustice.

At times, cinematographer Tannie Xin Tang brings the camera right up to Marcus’s mouth, making palpable the years of anguish and torment, ready to emerge and explode at any moment. Edited by Lesley Kubistal, with music and sound by CHXLL Sounds and scenic design by Alexandra Regazzoni, the eighty-minute hybrid work is informed by an ever-threatening claustrophobia that envelops the viewer, sitting at home, where not everyone is always as safe as they think they are. Marcus often is shown looking into his rearview mirror, watching out for what is chasing him, while the road ahead becomes continually darker. The ride can get bumpy, but the ultimate destination is as startling as it is, unfortunately, all too believable.

THE MURDER ON THE LINKS

Who: L.A. Theatre Works
What: All-star audio play based on Agatha Christie novel
Where: LATW online
When: Available starting July 1, $20 (nine-play season $150)
Why: In the 1990s, L.A. Theatre Works focused its attention on audio plays, “producing world classics, modern masterpieces, contemporary, and original works that speak to the issues of our times.” Audio plays have flourished during the pandemic lockdown, with excellent productions from the Public Theater, Keen Company, and Gideon Media, among many others. So the time is right for LATW’s digital 2020-21 nine-play season, which has included audio versions of The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse, Life on Paper by Kenneth Lin, Extinction by Hannie Rayson, Bump by Chiara Atik, A Weekend with Pablo Picasso by Herbert Sigüenza, For Us All by Jeanne Sakata, No-No Boy by Ken Narasaki, and A Good Day at Auschwitz by Stephen Tobolowsky.

Alfred Molina and Simon Helberg star in LATW audio adaptation of The Murder on the Links (photos by Matt Petit and Derek Hutchison)

The final work is Kate McAll’s audio theater adaptation of The Murder on the Links, based on Agatha Christie’s 1923 novel, which featured John Moffat as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in a 1990 BBC Radio 4 version and David Suchet as the intrepid detective in a 1996 episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot for British television. Here Alfred Molina stars as Poirot, with Simon Helberg as Poirot’s bestie, Capt. Arthur Hastings. The two men travel to France to meet with Paul Renauld, only to find out he has been murdered — and their quest soon leads to another body. The cast also features Adhir Kalyan as Jack Renaud, Joanne Whalley as Madame Daubreuil, Kevin Daniels as Detective Giraud, Edita Brychta as Madame Renauld and Françoise, Anna Lyse Erikson as Leonie, Darren Richardson as a sergeant, a doctor, and others, Jocelyn Towne as Cinderella and Marthe Daubreuil, and Matthew Wolf as Monsieur Hautet; the download includes access to a digital video of a table read. Recorded in West Hollywood in April 2021, The Murder on the Links is directed and produced by Erikson, with original music by John Biddle, editing by Charles Carroll, and foley sound by Jeff Gardner. Each LATW play can be downloaded for $20; all nine are available for $150 and come with such bonuses as a video conversation with LATW founding members Ed Asner, Richard Dreyfuss, Hector Elizondo, Stacy Keach, Marsha Mason, and JoBeth Williams.

TWO BY WALLACE SHAWN: GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS / THE DESIGNATED MOURNER

Who: Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Jennifer Tilly, Emily Cass McDonnell, Deborah Eisenberg, Larry Pine
What: Audio versions of Wallace Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors and The Designated Mourner
Where: Gideon Media
When: Available July 9
Why: Beloved New York City icon Wallace Shawn has kept himself very busy during the pandemic lockdown. He wonderfully reprised his role as the villainous Vizzini (“Inconceivable!”) in a Zoom benefit reunion reading of Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride to help support the Wisconsin Democratic party in the 2020 elections. The New GroupOffstage: Two by Wallace Shawn consisted of all-star Zoom reunion readings of his plays Aunt Dan and Lemon and Evening at the Talk House, the latter featuring his stellar turn as a bedraggled actor. And through July 25, you can catch him as Lucky in the New Group’s online adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with Ethan Hawke as Didi, John Leguizamo as Gogo, and Tarik Trotter as Pozzo.

The curmudgeonly Shawn continues visiting his past with audio versions of his two of his most intense shows, presented for free by Gideon Media and reuniting the casts from previous productions. In Grasses of a Thousand Colors, an erotic futuristic nightmare that had its world premiere in 2009 at the Royal Court Theatre in London and debuted in New York four years later at the Public, Shawn expands on Madame d’Aulnoy’s 1698 fairy tale The White Cat in a wild and unpredictable story about sex, humans, animals, sex, the food chain, and sex. “Oh, hello there!” Shawn begins as a doctor named Ben. “You know, I’m just so thrilled that you’ve made the rather wild decision to listen to the meaning of all people right at this very moment. I mean, I know you’re probably just as mixed up about everything as I am because since yesterday, well, things have obviously changed since yesterday, that’s totally clear. Things are definitely different in one way or another. I mean, it’s been quite a journey, my God. And the last part of it was so crazy.” The play brings back Julie Hagerty as Cerise, Ben’s wife; Jennifer Tilly as Robin, his mistress; and Emily Cass McDonnell as Rose, his girlfriend, along with director André Gregory, who starred with Shawn in Louis Malle’s brilliant 1981 film, My Dinner with André.

The play is divided into six sections, “Invitation,” “The Quest to Be Known,” “Affair,” “Revenge,” “Illness,” and “Party,” that are definitely not safe for work, for those who are back in the office. “So anyway,” Dr. Ben says, “You see, I’d always loved nudity, including nude performances, because what other pleasures can we get in life except from what is naked, or in other words from getting closer and closer to what we call nature.”

Also available is an audio version of Shawn’s The Designated Mourner, which premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 1996; this reading reunites Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg (Shawn’s real-life wife), and Larry Pine from the 2000 New York City production directed by Gregory in several small rooms in a building on William St. in the Financial District. Divided into “Resentment,” “Accommodation,” “Danger,” “Flight,” “Arrest,” and “Death,” the play delves into violence, authoritarianism, and injustice amid Shawn’s unrelenting trademark dark humor.

“It’s just remarkable that your father is allowed to exist!” Judy (Eisenberg) recalls being told about her father, Howard (Pine), a famous and well-respected poet. “And meanwhile your attention is entirely turned away from the human suffering that is going on all around you,” Howard tells Jack (Shawn), her husband. “You can sum me up in about ten words: a former student of English literature who — who went downhill from there!” Jack explains.

In Woody Allen’s 1987 comedy Radio Days, Shawn played the Masked Avenger, the hero of a popular radio serial, who says, “I wonder if future generations will ever even hear about us. It’s not likely. After enough time, everything passes. I don’t care how big we are or how important are our lives.” Through podcasts such as these of Shawn’s plays, future generations around the world will indeed get to hear about these seminal works.

INAUGURAL DRAMA BOOK SHOP IN-PERSON SIGNING — IN THE HEIGHTS: FINDING HOME

Who: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Jeremy McCarter
What: Book signing
Where: The Drama Book Shop, 266 West Thirty-Ninth St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
When: Wednesday, July 21, 2:00 (tickets on sale Friday, July 16, 10:00 am)
Why: In 2002, a theater group started rehearsing a new musical in the tiny Arthur Seelen Theatre in the basement of the Drama Book Shop, which was founded in 1917 by the Drama League and was bought by Arthur and Rozanne Seelen in 1958. With the future of the beloved store in jeopardy, it was purchased in January 2019 by two of the primaries involved with that rehearsal, director Thomas Kail and writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, along with producer Jeffrey Seller and theater impresario James L. Nederlander. The production was In the Heights, cowritten by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Broadway smash that was nominated for thirteen Tonys and won four, including Best Musical. Delayed by the pandemic lockdown, the new store, designed by David Korins, opened June 10 on West Thirty-Ninth St., and it is celebrating with its first in-store book signing, a rather big one.

On July 21 at 2:00, composer-lyricist-star Miranda, librettist Hudes, and theater writer Jeremy McCarter will be signing copies of their new tome, In the Heights: Finding Home (Penguin Random House, June 2021, $40), following up on the virtual launch that took place last month. The book opens with an introduction by McCarter that begins, “The actors took their bows, the crowd finished cheering, and everybody headed for the doors. Spotting a friend, I cut across the lobby. I asked, Did you just see what I just saw? Or words to that effect. It’s been fourteen years, so I can’t remember exactly what I said that night. But I do remember exactly how In the Heights made me feel.” The show was turned into a major motion picture that was released on June 10, in theaters and on HBO Max, to wide acclaim and a casting controversy. Limited tickets for the bookstore event, in which the authors will not sign anything other than the books and no photos with them are allowed, go on sale July 16 at 10:00 am, and they’re likely to go fast, so don’t hesitate if you want to keep sharing that feeling.

ICE FACTORY 2021

ICE FACTORY
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
Through August 14, $18-$29
newohiotheatre.org

New Ohio Theatre’s twenty-eighth-annual Ice Factory Festival got under way June 30 – July 3 with The Extremely Grey Line from 23.5°, which could be experienced on bikes, as a walking tour, or in the theater, followed July 7-10 by Lisa Helmi Johanson and Kimberly Immanuel’s Kim Loo Gets a Redo, inspired by the real-life jazz quartet the Kim Loo Sisters. You might have missed those two, but there is plenty more to see; the Obie-winning festival runs through August 14. Al Límite Collective’s Liminal Archive (July 14-17) is a forty-five-minute multimedia immersive journey that takes you back to the beginnings of the pandemic, featuring works by such artists as Cypress Atlas, Arthur Ban, Toney Brown, Katya Chizhayeva, Caio D’aguilar, Jessica Daugherty, and Sissy Doutsiou, from across the United States as well as Greece, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and other countries.

Dow-Dance explores radical Black love and Sundown Towns in As the Sun Sets (July 21-24), performed by Imani Gaudin-County, Andy Guzmán, Jai Perez, and company founder and choreographer Caleb Dowden. Teatro Dallas’s A Grave Is Given Supper (July 28-31) is a one-person Narco-Acid Western set in a US-Mexico border town, written by Mike Soto, directed by Claudia Acosta, and performed by Elena Hurst. An inheritance brings together a pair of strangers (Laura Butler-Levitt and Heather Hollingsworth) in In Tandem Lab’s Herstory (August 4-7). Daniel Irizarry directs and stars in My Onliness (August 11-14) from One-Eighth Theatre, with text by Robert Lyons and music by Kamala Sankaram. Over the course of the festival, the solo interactive sound installation Endless Loop of Gratitude, created by Broken Chord, Steph Ferreira, Jackson Gay, Steven Padla, Riw Rakkulchon, and Ashley M. Thomas, invites visitors up to a microphone to answer the question: “What are you really grateful for?” We’re really grateful for the return of indoor theater and affordable summer festivals such as Ice Factory. (To enter the New Ohio, you have to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test from the past seventy-two hours, and the audience must wear masks.)