This post is from Maren Hinderlie who had some trouble signing up to the website: Don’t miss Penumbra’s production of Pipeline by Dominque Morrisseau directed by Lou Bellamy Again Penumbra Theater gives us the kind of experience not be found on screens or in our daily lives. None of us has the privilege of Dominque Morriseau’s insights combined with her access to places inhabited by neighbors friends or ourselves. She like August Wilson has rare talent for giving us unforgettable real characters in situations we can’t help but identify as true real and us. The cast led by Erika LaVonn and seamlessly supported by Kory Pullman, Kiara Jackson, Darius Dotch, Melanie Wehrmacher and Ansa Akyea had us riveted to their stories. Under Lou Bellamy’s direction we in the audience became like one collective witness with unwavering attention! Now that I have been through these stories with these characters I know I too own Nya’s fears for her son, frustration with the unreliable presence of Xavier and her isolation from her peers who because of who they are: Kiara a teenager, Dun, a man and Laurie a white teacher do not share her predicament. Her emotional honesty and courage to forge on even without the guidance she cries out for gives her heroic stature. She doesn’t need to preach to any one about this. We know. We understand. We honor her. This play offers no silver bullet No prescription for better schools or better marriages or a better society. It gives the history we might not be privileged to have in any other way. This experience makes us one with all who suffer in violent or ignorant schools, broken marriages, and communities that persist in keeping some in and some out of a place to grow toward self respect and mutual well being.

At the invitation of the Race Equity Committee I attended the Penumbra Theater’s production of Pipeline written by Dominique Morrisseau and directed by Lou Bellamy. Pipeline presents a story of race, institutions, a family breakup, and the interaction between them all. The characters encounter circumstances that many people in contemporary times can identify with. A mother filled with anxiety over sending her son into the world. A father who cannot connect with his child after the family has dissolved. And the understandable effort that any parents might make to give their child the advantages that their own life circumstances and perspective might offer. But the characters also experience circumstances that only some of us can identify with, namely the experience of being black in America. And then more precisely, the circumstances of being black in America and trying to navigate multiple dichotomies: the inner city school vs. a mostly white boarding school; rules and policies vs. the ground truth that people face day-to-day; the ‘hood’ vs. the safer community that some middle class African Americans might move to; or an educator working hard to deliver a good education to minority youth vs. a pragmatic realism that leads the same educator to send her own child somewhere else. Omari, the son of divorced parents Nya and Xavier, is a young man having trouble fitting in to his mostly white, upper middle class, boarding school. This difficulty has brought him into prior conflicts as well as the most acute situation at the play’s opening that may lead to his expulsion from the school. This problem contributes to crushing anxiety and dread that Nya, his mother, is experiencing and seems to have been experiencing for a long time. We eventually learn that Omari’s trouble involved a physical altercation with a teacher that followed what he perceived to be race-based antagonism. We also learn that the young man is filled with anger toward his absent father. The father, Xavier, presents as a successful professional with financial means, but is stunted in his capacity to handle difficult emotions. His solutions to problems seem rooted in escape, evasion, or anger. The other main character in this play is the invisible specter of what happens to an African American young man if he gets off track. What will happen to Omari if he succumbs to the dangers and vices of his own neighborhood? What will happen to Omari if he gets kicked out of his school, attended in the hopes of gaining privilege through proximity to privilege? What will happen to Omari if charges are pressed in regards to his alleged assault on his teacher? What would happen if Omari had to return to the community school where his mother teaches and had to face the continual threat of violence present in the school? What will happen to Omari if he does not replicate the middle class prosperity of his parents by attaining a professional role? The fact that race leads to greater risk of negative outcomes on all of these dimensions is certainly part of what Morrisseau is laying out for us. But that point could be made, and frequently is, in an academic way. What the playwright has done is to capture the pain of the uncertainty and the way different people cope with that pain. Near the end of the play, Nya, Omari’s mother, addresses the audience. At that point we are in the position of the school administrative body that will decide the severity of Omari’s consequences. She seeks leniency, a second chance, a proper appreciation of what is at stake for Omari’s future. For a moment it does seem that Morrisseau is putting this decision on us, the audience. What would we decide, knowing so much of the back story of these characters? And perhaps compare that with what the administrators might decide in the absence of the omniscience the audience has been granted. I won’t give my answer and I won’t give away Morrisseau’s answer. Which means at least one thing: I do recommend that you go to see the play.