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Spinning Into Butter
By Rebecca Gilman
Directed by Anish Jethmalani
Produced by Eclipse Theatre Company
At Victory Gardens Theater
2257 N. Lincoln
Chicago, IL
Call 773-871-3000, tickets $22
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 PM
Sundays at 3 PM
Running time is 2 hours with intermission
Through September 3, 2006
Spinning Into Butter is a brave denunciation of white liberal racism.
Eclipse Theatre (number #10 on my list of the “Best Non-Equity Theatres”) continues its season of ‘one playwright-one season’ with Rebecca Gilman’s controversial Spinning Into Butter. This is a bluntly honest look at the subtle racism unknowingly practiced by many white liberals, particularly in academe. This is an important work that is marvelously presented that packs a wallop! Gilman has it all going with this riveting theme that only the bravest playwrights would venture writing about. Good for her since racism and political correctness are worthy themes. This tragicomedy is full of wit, biting humor and academic archetypes.
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Spinning Into Butter focuses on a small Vermont college where controversy arises when racist notes are pinned to the door of an African-American student. The new Dean of Students, Sarah Daniels (played with intensity and rich nuances by Kerry Richlan) is caught in the middle between helping the student(s) and doing the political correct thing. Sarah, herself, has issues with her own guilt, her own internal racism despite her sincere efforts to help minority students. Add her personal loss of her lover, Professor Ross Collins (steady work from Robert McLean) and Sarah is not having a good time at Belmont College. Sarah and Ross have one of those liberal lover’s agreements whereby neither are totally committed yet each act as if they are. Ross and Sarah exchange the liberated adults take on personal relationships.
When Sarah attempts to help a minority student, Patrick Chibas (Gerardo Cardenas) get a $12,000 scholarship, he resists being categorized as Latin, Latino or Puerto Rican. He insists he’s ‘New Yorcian’ and an individual who only wants to be heard and accepted as who he is. Sarah, in her bureaucratic mode, tells Patrick that he must be listed as a recognizable group in order to get the scholarship. She apologizes for the dehumanizing treatment to him. Her guilt nags at her.
The racist notes have Sarah telling the security chief Meyers (John Ruhaak) to contact the police as a possible hate crime. The faculty led by Dean Kenny (Cheri Chenoweth), Sarah’s boss and Dean Strauss (Larry Baldacci, the ultra-snob academic) want to keep the incident from the public. In an attempt to distance themselves and the college from any responsibility, they offer seminars and official statements in response to the crisis. The deans never care what the minority students have to say. The “I’m not a racist” declarations by the faculty gets Sarah doing a self-examination of her motives and attitudes toward blacks.
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In act two, Sarah delivers (to Ross) a twenty minute monologue wherein she gives her history of how she intellectually fought her racism by studying African-American history and cultural and becoming a collage administrator dedicated to helping minority students get ahead. Slowly she realized that her ‘plantation mentality’ was condescending and insulting to minorities despite her sincerest efforts. Resistance to this behavior by some students hurt her deeply.
But the most telling story that zeroes in Sarah’s white liberal racism is her description of her EL rides in Chicago. She tells how she has an order of priorities as to where and with whom she’ll sit next to on the train. White females are first and black males are to be avoided at all costs. Orientals and Latinos come before Blacks with women coming before men and if the only seat is next to a Black male, she’ll stand all the way to her stop. Sarah goes on to say that, on one level, she thinks many Blacks are “rude, lazy and stupid and too darn scary.” Ross admits that he does the same on a subway trips and that when he looks at a Black person, he sees a Black person first before anything else whereas when he sees a white person, he sees a woman, pretty or not or a man, large or small, etc.
The honesty of Sarah and Ross’ admissions sure must ring true to many of us. Sarah further states that she moved to Vermont to avoid dealing with Blacks. Playwright Gilman depicts the hypocrisy of the “white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” through the self-serving actions of Dean Kenny and Dean Strauss. Without giving away more plot points, let me say that Spinning Into Butter deftly deals with the lack of communication between the minority students and the faculty. Letting dialogue open between the students, where white and blacks can communicate their attitudes, wants and dreams doesn’t comply with the administrations sense of political correctness. Ambivalence and misunderstanding of minorities is surely hampered by political correctness. Sarah points the way by opening communication, first with herself, then with the minorities.
Gilman offers hope that through honest, uninhibited dialogue, racism can be solved, one person at a time. This intelligent play is driven home with powerful acting from Kerry Richlan and Robert McLean with strong efforts from Cheri Chenoweth and Larry Baldacci. Kevin Scott’s stone-walled and multi-windowed set aptly depicts the classic WASP New England college.
Kudos to Eclipse Theatre for mounting this cautionary look into the unspoken cancer of white liberal racism. Let the debate begin.
Highly Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Date Reviewed: July 22, 2006
Jeff Recommended
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