‘Comedy of manners’ explores racial attitudes

“We tend to think we live in a post-racial age, but it’s not too difficult to find the same racial attitudes, if you look,” says director Fred Franklin from Virginia, who previously directed several Tennessee Williams plays in Albuquerque.

“‘Clybourne Park’ is a comedy of manners. We’re not behaving as we should. The jokes are politically incorrect,” Franklin explains of the Bruce Norris play, presented by FUSION, a professional theater company.

	If you go WHAT: FUSION Theatre Company presents “Clybourne Park” WHEN, WHERE and HOW MUCH: Running at the Cell Theatre, 700 First NW, just south of Lomas, March 7-13. March 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. (Sold out March 7-10.) Tickets are $35 general admission, $30 students. Visit www.fusionnm.org. Running at the KiMo Theatre, 423 W. Central NW, at 8 p.m. March 15 and 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. March 16. Tickets $37 general, $32 seniors older than 65 and $12 students. Pay what you wish March 16 at 2 p.m. Visit the box office or www.kimotickets.com. Running at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe, March 15, 16, 22 and 23. Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $20-$40, students $10. Visit www.ticketssantafe.org

Franklin says when he saw the play in New York City, the audience laughed all the way through at “things we were not supposed to find funny.”

The play is divided in two acts: one in 1959 at the scene of a Clybourne Park home, made famous by the fictional Younger family of “A Raisin In the Sun,” who were the first black family to move into a previously all-white neighborhood in Chicago.

The second act is 50 years later in the same house. The neighborhood, now mostly black and brown, is fighting a white couple, who want to tear down the house to build a new home.

“The cast is the same in 1959 and in 2009,” Franklin explains. “It’s a great thing for the audience to see an actor performing two different roles. It’s been a pleasure to work with actors who are that good.”

The FUSION production stars Jen Grigg, Bruce Holmes, Jacqueline Reid, and Gregory Wagrowski, as well as Hakim Bellamy, Albuquerque’s inaugural poet laureate, Evan Garrett and Angela Littleton.

Garrett, who plays a minister in the first act and a real estate agent in the second, says his characters offer solutions to the neighbors, but no one listens.

Originally from Chicago, Garrett says the play rings true: “I can walk right down the street and see these issues in real life.”

Bellamy says he plays the husband of the black housekeeper in the first act and a popular, though irritating, securities trader in the second act: “The only color that matters to him is green. He’s not part of the solution.”

“The play is about how we all pretend that we live in a post-racial age and it’s ‘Kumbaya’ time with us all holding hands, but it’s not,” Bellamy says. “Just because we don’t talk about it (racial prejudice) doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Bellamy points to social statistics for African-Americans like lower life expectancy, higher unemployment and higher rates of incarceration as evidence of continuing racism.

“A law may stop someone from burning a cross in my front lawn, but it can’t make my neighbor love me,” he says, adding the play is about the fine line between civilization and more primitive instincts.

“We’re well-meaning people. It took us 300 years to get into this mess and it will likely take 300 years to get out. Just because we have a change in manners, doesn’t mean we have a change of heart.”