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White People

at Live Theatre Workshop

November 6-November 21, 2009

The country has finally elected a black president yet remains a very long way from resolving its issues about prejudice, as White People, by the playwright J.T. Rogers, demonstrates. The play's three characters, all white, alternate in sharing histories. Alan (Cliff Madison), a Manhattan professor, admires the determination of New York's Dutch colonizers even as he acknowledges their persecution of Jews and Quakers. At the same time, he is exhilarated, almost smitten, by Felicia, a black student. But when he and his pregnant wife are mugged by black teenagers, he confronts his own intolerance. Mara Lynn (Amanda Gremel), a mother in Fayetteville, N.C., wrestles with memories of her cheerleader past; the faded athletic glories of her husband, Earl, now a delivery-truck driver; and the struggles of her young, epileptic son. Frustrated, she vents her wrath on an Indian physician. Martin (Glen Coffman) is a driven St. Louis lawyer who married for his wife's blue-blood genes and bemoans what he sees as the decline of the English language and popular music. His disdain for his black secretary ? and black culture in general ? is pronounced, and yet he is dumbfounded when his son becomes a violent skinhead. White People is a profound look at how Americans can unwittingly exhibit intense bigotry even when they sincerely mean well.