Displaying items by tag: kevin douglas

On a beautiful plantation in the modern day South, a mother asks her three daughters what they would change in the world, if they could. After rattling off some Miss America-esque answers – including "giving a croissant to a homeless person" – the girls go back to their own self-interests, i.e. taking recreational painkillers and prepping for a reality show audition.

Their world gets turned upside down when their mother announces that they will be hosting, and gifting the deed of the family plantation to, three black women, women who are descendants of a slave who worked on the plantation and had relations with the family's great-great-grandfather. Although with very different backgrounds, upbringings, and access to privilege due to skin color, these seven women are family.

Not to get all "Webster's Dictionary defines..." but I have to say it a little louder for the All Lives Matter folks in the back: A privilege is a special advantage or benefit available only to a particular person or group of people. A benefit, for instance, like a big, beautiful plot of land that your family forced slaves to maintain. Or, for instance, a thriving business that has clothed, fed, and housed generations of white descendants for centuries while providing nothing to the black descendants of the people without whom there wouldn't be a business. The slaves did the work, yet it's the family of the slaveowners who reap the benefits.

This 21st century answer to reparations is inspiring and brilliantly funny, with a fast-paced and clever script by Kevin Douglas and superb directing by David Schwimmer. Plantation! is both a conversation starter and high quality entertainment. Chaos and comedy ensue while the six girls try to make nice and get to know each other, all while griping beyond each others' backs about who really deserves the plantation. The play is a hilarious send-up of well-meaning white people; who sincerely want to help, yet do nothing when presented with the chance to do so; who swear up and down they aren't racist, yet date a member of the KKK because he doesn't go to "all" of the meetings.

In one scene, the girls are all Southern-Belle'd out in big, old-fashioned dresses for a fancy dinner on the estate. When the black girls turn on some music and start dancing, one of the white girls yells that it's like they have Beyonce in the house. Her sister admonishes her, "That's racist."

"No, it's not. That's a compliment," one of the black girls replies, high-fiving her sisters. The white sister who thought she was rightly calling out racism shakes her head, "You people are confusing." The black sisters share a glance. "That's racist," they say. Case in point, maybe listen to what people who experience racism have to say about it before defining racism for them. (Also, rule of thumb, don't make black people explain Black Lives Matter to you – which, naturally, plays out onstage here. Google is your friend.)

Finally, the cast of eight women knocked it out of the park with their chemistry and comedic timing. Besides the fabulous poofy dresses, it seemed to me that this play could've been cast with either men or women and the story would be the same. Props to Lookingglass and Douglas for not setting the default to "male." And for not being afraid to have a mixed race cast discuss race and make everyone in the audience, to use the playwright's own word, a little "funcomfortable".

Plantation is playing at Lookingglass Theatre Company through April 22nd. Tickets on LookingglassTheatre.org.