Provocative and Prismatic How to Be Project Explores Racial Justice at Bishop Arts Theatre Center

The dictionary definition of justice is deceptively simple: “The quality of being righteous, impartial or fair.” To watch The How to Be Project: Ten Plays for Racial Justice unfold across the Bishop Arts Theatre Center’s stage is to be reminded – bracingly, amusingly and most often, painfully – how often that quality is not afforded to those whose skin color is anything other than white.

Bishop Arts Theatre commissioned 10 Black playwrights to “author one-act plays inspired by and in conversation with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to be an Antiracist,” according to a statement by the theater. “At a time where Black authors … and other prominent Black writers are engaged in conversations about America’s racial reckoning, The How to Be Project seeks to produce works that continue the dialogue in the enduring struggle for racial justice.” the theatre said in a statement.

The series of vignettes, presented in two “acts” of five plays each separated by a 15-minute intermission, traverses the full range of human emotion and makes for an often gripping evening at the theater. Indeed, what might seem on its face to be aggressively didactic instead smuggles its teachings into the room, letting the weight of what’s being conveyed accrue throughout the night.

Directed by Morgana Wilborn and starring a tight-knit octet of actors – Alexandria Lofton, Dillard Gibson, RJAY Colbert, Octavia Y. Thomas, Jon Garrard, Shun Lauren, Z.Z. Wright and Olivia Broome – the plays that make up How to Be are briskly paced.

Lofton and Thomas, in particular, emerge over the course of the evening as the company’s MVPs, shifting with ease across a full spectrum of feeling and personhood and embodying their characters with skill and specificity.

Much care was taken between installments to help frame out what is about to transpire, whether through interstitial music, quotes from Kendi’s 2019 nonfiction tome or brief video clips. This contextualization helps ground some of the more abstract elements and allows the monologues to cohere with the multi-character pieces.

The stage design is spare out of necessity, given the breadth of the subjects tackled, but the evocative lighting by Adam Chamberlin, deliberate movements (courtesy of choreographer Jasmine Mychell Miller) and detailed costumes from Gelacio Eric Gibson all help convey distinct elements of each play, without needing to rely on extravagant sets to capture the imagination.

The first half opens with Oba William King’s Water Fountain 1967. Lauren delivers a spirited monologue, as harsh words and ugly reality provide a fascinating tension with his ebullient delivery.

Kristen Adele Calhoun’s What Would Have Been takes flight, thanks to the chemistry between Wright and Gibson, whose epistolary relationship springs to life in the pair’s vivid back-and-forth (“You just want to fight, don’t you?” “I just want to be seen,” goes one particularly illuminating exchange). Set in the early 1970s in Harlem, the play’s stormy moments give way to a conclusion full of hope and sweetness.

Eugene Lee’s grimly funny, poignant Government Cheese is the first half’s indisputable highlight, and a phenomenal showcase for Thomas, whose performance as Betty Lou McGuiness will take your breath away. Without spoiling the searing climax, suffice to say that McGuiness, a mother who “proudly raised good Americans,” is stung by a kind of institutional betrayal, evoking a broader indictment of how society easily disposes of those it professes to honor.

Perhaps the direct juxtaposition to such a powerhouse piece causes Michael Harrison’s The Ghost of History to suffer by comparison, as the conversation between Kayla (Broome) and Malik (Colbert) feels diffuse, alluding to current hot-button topics such as incarceration and mandated vaccinations, while building to emotional outbursts that don’t feel fully earned.

There’s enough percolating within Paula Sanders’ bitterly funny and bruising Classes to fuel a few seasons’ worth of a streaming soap opera. The vicious tug-of-war between what’s expected and what’s desired, and the value of authenticity amid society and culture’s relentless drive to gentrify, allows the four actors to spark off one another – Wright’s haughty, snippy Lynn Blackmon-Woodson clashes memorably with, well, everyone, and Lauren’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jones is the man caught in the middle, unable to please anyone, least of all himself.

A Good Neighborhood, by Alle Mims, sets the bar high early as the first installment of the second act. Split between 1992 and 2010, the piece interrogates the notion that moving up in the world really yields benefits.

“We didn’t break the cycle – we just trapped him in a new one,” says Thomas’ Pam of their son Malik (Gibson). It’s a quietly devastating reminder of the idiom about the grass always seeming greener on the other side.

Bwalya Chisanga’s Self Education is a dizzying blend of dream logic and rough reality, as high school student Mal (Lofton) works to understand themself and make their teacher (Broome) see through her own prejudices. The actors step into and out of multiple roles in the space of just a few minutes, adding to the sensation of the real and imagined being blurred.

The Elephant in the Room, by Zetra Goodlow, is the night’s most challenging piece, not least because it traffics in emotional extremes more modulated elsewhere. Here, the horror is placed front and center, and as Gaja, Lofton is riveting as she negotiates the existential nightmare tormenting her. Bright pop music is spiked with the bloody violence of a car crash, and a profound soul-scarring serves up a bleak finale.

The dystopian banality – depicted via matching uniforms, an omnipresent eye in the sky and mandated interracial marriage – of Erin Malone Turner’s Gray underscores the deceptive ease with which racism’s virulence spreads. White privilege – a toxic trait all too familiar for anyone with even a passing awareness of the day’s news – fuels this spiky, jarring piece, which builds to a hopeful denouement. (“What’s possible? Everything.”)

Jonathan Norton’s Hey Asshat: A Recently Discovered Play by August Wilson ends the evening on a wryly funny note, helping connect the works of these Black playwrights back to the landmark plays authored by the Pulitzer Prize-winning “poet of Black America,” as Wilson has been described.

Taken together, The How to Be Project: Ten Plays for Racial Justice is a provocative, poetic and prismatic evening, proving to be absorbing throughout, even as the pieces, collectively, reveal uncomfortable truths and force viewers to consider unpleasant realities. While it might seem asking too much for any play to help right the pervasive wrongs of racism within society, those underestimating the power of well-intentioned art to effect change do so at their own peril.

Bishop Arts Theatre Center’s production of The How to Be Project: Ten Plays for Racial Justice opened Feb. 17 and runs with eight additional performances until Sunday, March 6, at 215 S. Tyler St. Proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of the performance date is required for admission, and masks are required within the theater. Tickets are available at bishopartstheatre.org.