Displaying items by tag: PJ Powers

Based on a book by two authors and giving playwriting credit to three authors, "The Lifespan of a Fact" speaks in a notably singular voice. Now in its Chicago premiere at TimeLine Theatre, the play takes a celebrated freelance writer, his editor at an esteemed magazine, and a newbie factchecker through a weekend clash over an essay. As the trio speeds towards a Monday morning deadline to get copy to a printing press in Kankakee, IL, they wrestle with the difference between fact and truth.

It is a fact that in 2002, a 16-year-old leaped to his death from the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas. In response, John D’Agata wrote an essay and Jim Fingal, hired to check the facts, did just that until the piece came apart at the seams. That led to a book about their process, The Lifespan of a Fact, and then playwrights Jeremey Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell fashioned a 90-minute drama by the same title that opened on Broadway in 2018.

Here in a Chicago, Michelle Moe directs PJ Powers as John who insists he is an essayist, not a journalist; Alex Benito Rodriguez as Jim, the recent Harvard graduate who challenges John’s loose relationship with facts; and Juliet Hart as Emily, the pragmatic editor trying to avoid lawsuits. As the publishing deadline approaches, all three actors cling to their viewpoints while imbuing their characters with a generous amount of charm.

A script with such complex authorship might have been a muddle but it is not. "The Lifespan of a Fact" is sharp, focused and funny. Objecting to John’s use of the phrase “traffic jam,” Jim draws a diagram of the number of cars that John claimed to be at an intersection. Later John describes the numerically precise young man as “poison to the creative process.” What the script does not do, however, is go beyond its consideration of media ethics and into its characters’ interior lives.

This makes it hard to connect with them emotionally. Briefly, though, the script edges into vulnerability with John, currently living in his late mother’s Las Vegas home. Its fusty, dated, floral décor seems miles from the Vegas Strip. It’s a house for which John bought an armchair with dimensions that didn’t match the catalog description at all points – and which, therefore, was tough for his mother to navigate with her walker. It’s also a house from which she was transported to a hospital by ambulance, her time of death no more exact than the armchair measurements.

John reveals that his mother had volunteered for a suicide hotline and that, after her passing, he worked a hotline shift, taking calls from people anguishing in Las Vegas’ dark corners. For a moment, the tone shifts from intellectual debate to deep feelings for a mother who tried to help others. Emotions, John hints, motivated him to seek the truth, not the facts, about the 16-year-old who threw himself off the Stratosphere Tower.

Had the play brought its characters to this level of authenticity, the loss of a young life might have felt truly tragic. It might have brought us closer to its public and personal meaning, and the conflict between the people onstage might have been far more disturbing. "The Lifespan of a Fact" is playing through December 23 at TimeLine Theatre. 

What did you do during the 2020 lockdown? Many people I know took on a special project – learning to bake bread, or writing a novel. Me, I took a literary antiracism journey. From the classics like Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin, WEB DuBois, and James Baldwin to more contemporary thinkers – TaNehisi Coates, Ibram X Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Ijeoma Oluo – over the long months of lockdown I immersed myself in antiracism theory. The genre I (obviously) could not explore was theatre, and it’s gratifying to see so much antiracism woven through 2022-23 Chicago’s theatre season.

It absolutely blows me away that TROUBLE IN MIND, written by Alice Childress in 1955, incorporates all the concepts I read about modern Critical Race Theory. Dozens of the ideologies presented by these brilliant scholars – societal racism, privilege, internalized inferiority, white fragility, microaggressions – all these concepts are right there in TROUBLE IN MIND. Childress understood it all in 1955; she put it all out there in books and on stages, and nobody was listening. Takes my breath away.

Timeline Theatre, with their strong company, long experience, broad resources and culture of excellence, presents us with a superlative production of this incredible play. At the interval my companion and I were debating which was finer – the script, the acting, or the production – and at the final curtain we were still unable to single one out.

‘The play’s the thing … wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’, and TROUBLE IN MIND catches our consciences with a play-within-a-play, showing the actors, director and production assistant at the initial read-through of Chaos in Belleville, an anti-lynching Southern drama. Tim Decke h/h plays director Al Manners,  a domineering egomaniac who brags that they’re producing an authentic and far-reaching social commentary. Shariba Rivrsh/h is brilliant as Wiletta Mayer, the lead (in both plays), who offers unsolicited instruction to neophyte John Nevins (Vincent Jordanh/h) on how to ingratiate himself to the white director. Sheldon Forrester, wonderfully played by Kenneth D Johnson h/h, an old hand at being a Black actor in a White field and scorns Wiletta’s obsequious tactics. Tarine J Bradshawsh/h is Millie Davis, more concerned with physical appearances than with anyone’s behavior. White castmates Judy Sears (Jordan Ashley Griesh/h), Bill O’Wray (Guy Van Swearingenh/h) and grizzled stagehand Henry (Charles Stranskeyh/h) are foils against this Black-on-Black controversy. Adam Shalzih/h plays flunkey stage manager Eddie Fenton in the uncomfortable role of agreeing (mostly) with the Black actors but subject to Manners’ despotism.

The substance of TROUBLE IN MIND is Wiletta’s own antiracism journey. She begins by talking the ‘you gotta be what they want’ talk, but ultimately finds herself unable to walk that walk. Manners is arrogantly confident that with Chaos in Belleville he’s PRODUCING the last word in social commentary – thereby, of course, proving himself a superior antiracist [sic]. Wiletta, keenly aware of the bigotry between the lines she’s called upon to speak, is ever more impelled to challenge Manners’ vision and direction … and inevitably to challenge Manners himself.

As I said, TROUBLE IN MIND illustrates countless facets of racism, including police brutality, affirmative action, and intersectionality. Wiletta and Millie recognize the sexist agenda in Manners’ ‘darlings’ and ‘girls; they are keenly mindful of his ‘hands-on’ approach to directing pretty blonde Judy, the sole white woman. Sisterhood trumps color, and they cross racial lines to protect the girl from Manners’ predation.

Unsurprisingly, TROUBLE IN MIND was no more popular in 1950’s American theatre than are Wiletta’s critiques of Chaos in Belleville. We see multiple intersections between TROUBLE IN MIND, Chaos in Belleville, and Childress’ real life.

Raised during the Harlem Renaissance, Childress was a crony and peer of such luminaries as Sidney Poitier, Noble Sissle, Ethel Waters and Paul Robeson. She co-founded the  American Negro Theatre, and she left us a rich body of superb work, much of which languished unappreciated for decades. TROUBLE IN MIND, now justly considered one of the great plays of the 20th Century, waited 66 years to be produced on Broadway. An early attempt was abandoned when Childress refused to make changes that producers felt would make the work ‘more palatable’ – yet another ironic confluence.

Production of TROUBLE IN MIND definitively meets Timeline’s high standards. Mica Cole is Executive Director; Artistic Director PJ Powers calls OJ Parson “Director extraordinaire”. In the program Powers quotes from the eponymous lyrics:

Trouble in mind, I’m blue

But I won’t be blue always,

‘cause the sun’s gonna shine

In my backdoor someday

Caitlin McLeodsh/h is Scenic designer; Christine Pascualsh/h and Megan E Pirtlesh/h design costumes and hair, respectively. Brandon Wardelh/h creates terrific effects with light design, augmented by Christopher Krizh/h Music and Sound. Miranda Andersonsh/h is Stage Manager; Gianni Carcagnoh/h is Production Assistant and Covid Compliance Officer. Martine Kei Green-Rogerssh/h is Dramaturg, with Assistant Deron S. Williams h/h. Dina Spoerlsh/h is Dramaturgical Display Designer – which I believe makes her responsible for the wonderful historic exhibits and portraits in the lobby … thank you!  My thanks to all of you for this amazing production.

*Extended through December 18th