Paul, MN — Bush funding will be used for general operating through the Regional Arts Development Program II to increase artistic excellence, community.
Penumbra Theatre Company was founded in 1976 by Lou Bellamy as a venue for African American voices within the Twin Cities theatre scene and has stood for more than thirty-five years at the intersection of art, culture, politics, and local community engagement. It has helped launch the careers of many internationally respected theatre artists and has been repeatedly recognized for its artistic excellence as the nation’s foremost African American theatre.Penumbra is the first-ever history of this barrier-breaking institution. Based on extensive interviews with actors, directors, playwrights, producers, funders, and critics, Macelle Mahala’s book offers a multifaceted view of the theatre and its evolution.
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In plays that explicitly deal with issues of race and racism, there’s often a moment when a seemingly well-intentioned white person — sometimes casually and unintentionally; sometimes in a heated moment — says something plainly racist.These moments tend to elicit an audible groan (of disapproval? Uncomfortable self-recognition?) from white audiences. Part of what Claudia Rankine tells us in “The White Card” is that people of color call these moments “Wednesday.” Or “lunchtime.” Or “riding the elevator.”That’s a surface point in Rankine’s knotty examination of art and privilege and white savior-ism making its area premiere at Penumbra Theatre Company. But it feels like an important means of entry: Rankine — best known as a poet and a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient — provides those grimace-inducing moments early and often in her short, sharp 80-minute script.The play’s central character — an artist named Charlotte Cummings — spends the entirety of the play around rich white people who consider themselves allies in the battle against racism, but can’t escape the bubble of their own self-reference and who well don’t listen very well. The first half of the play finds her in the posh home of Charles and Virginia Spencer. They are philanthropists and collectors of African-American works who are eager to include Charlotte in what Virginia calls their “stable of artists.”.
Dubious from the start, Charlotte discovers that the art that adorns the walls of their Manhattan home — and of their foundation — consists primarily of chronicles of and meditations on what she describes as “black death;” from Michael Brown’s shooting by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., to Dylann Roof’s slaughter of nine during Bible study in Charleston, S.C.When Charlotte tells her would-be patrons that they are “locked into your imagination of blackness,” the evening devolves into a shouting match. The proposed artistic/commercial collaboration does not happen.
The final scene of the play takes place in the artist’s studio, where Charlotte and Charles pointedly discuss Charlotte’s most recent exhibition, which turns the tables on objectification.Director Talvin Wilks’ staging is intense, propulsive and slyly in-your-face: Penumbra’s compact stage breaks the fourth wall with a runway that extends into the audience. In Chelsea M. Warren’s white-on-white scenic design, the framed art in the Spencer home bleeds off the stage and onto the walls of the auditorium.Lynnette R. Freeman deftly treads the line of an artist balancing commerce and conscience. As Charlotte, she endures a series of micro-aggressions with a scarcely arched brow or a barely constrained side-glance. When she’s charged with wanting her work “supported by the very people you are critiquing,” the accusation takes her almost physically aback.The white characters are drawn more broadly, but mostly escape caricature in some skillful performances: Charles (Bill McCallum) is a self-assured millionaire who has no trouble reconciling his curatorial instincts with the fact that part of his fortune comes from building private prisons. Virginia (Michelle O’Neill) is the dutiful wife with unexamined attitudes about pretty much everything.
Alex (Jay Owen Eisenberg) is their Black Lives Matter activist son, imbued with the kind of certainty fueled by youthful idealism. And Eric (John Catron) is an art dealer, able to neatly separate art from its social commentary. These characters are forced to confront their own attitudes and their complicity. In doing so, they hold a mirror up — particularly to white audiences — demanding them to examine themselves. All of which makes “The White Card” a challenging and frequently uncomfortable play to watch. Which, I suspect, was precisely the playwright’s intention.
Penumbra Theatre’s “The White Card”. When: Through March 8. Where: Penumbra Theatre Company, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul. Tickets: $40-$15; 651-224-3180 or penumbratheatre.org. Capsule: Claudia Rankine’s short, sharp play probes art and privilege.