Faber & Faber -- tpb
©2000 -- 96pp
ISBN: 0571199844
a new play that explores the dangers of both racism and political correctness in America today in a manner that is at once profound, disturbing, darkly comic, and deeply cathartic. Rebecca Gilman challenges our preconceptions about race relations, writing of a liberal dean of students named Sarah Daniels who investigates the pinning of anonymous, clearly racist letters on the door of one of the college's few African American students. The stunning discovery that there is a virulent racist on campus forces Sarah, along with other faculty members and students, to explore her feelings about racism, leading to surprising discoveries and painful insights that will rivet and provoke the reader.
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I was not at all familiar with this play before reading it. Gilman's name sounded familiar but I couldn't name anything she'd written. I am sure that will change for me.
Judging simply by the title, I suspected that this play would deal with racial issues and I admit to having second thoughts because I just wasn't looking for a didactic lesson on race. Fortunately, what I got was not a lesson on race but a lesson on racism. And...surprise, surprise...from a "white" perspective! How novel! How daring! And, being Caucasian, it actually reached me in a way that a play never has before.
The play is about one individual on a college campus who is forced to face her own feelings of racism. Outward, she appears level-headed, intelligent, and very sympathetic to racial issues. But of course sympathy is perhaps not the right emotion to have. Inward, the woman struggles with her views on 'blacks' and admits that one of the reasons she took a job at a college in Vermont was to get away from the black population.
One of the most beautiful aspects of this play is that it takes a major issue, and brings it in to focus through one individual -- and a likable individual! It forces us to look at ourselves and how similar we may be to this character.
There are no clear answers, only lots of soul-searching questions, but the play does end with a spark of promise.
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