- Announcer: Funding for APT's "Out of the Woods"
is provided by
Arcadia Books,
Dane Arts,
Nancy A. McDaniel,
Orange Tree Imports,
Wilson Creek Pottery,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
[whippoorwills singing] [crickets chirping]
[playful classical music]
[birds warbling]
- Brenda DeVita: Hello everybody, welcome.
Welcome, thank you so much for being with us tonight
for our "Out of the Woods" reading series.
I want to thank PBS Wisconsin again for being with us
through this journey, and telling these stories
and making it available to people across Wisconsin
and the United States.
We appreciate our partnership with you, thank you.
Many of you have been watching us
from the beginning of these series, all the way back in May,
on every Sunday night, being here with us.
And we cannot thank you enough for... [sighs]
I don't know, letting us know that you find this valuable
and you like to spend your time listening to these stories.
Thank you, it's generous, and it makes us all feel
like our work is worthwhile.
So I appreciate you being with us again tonight.
A lot of you are aware,
if you've been coming to the theatre for a long time,
our growing exploration of looking at new voices,
new stories, new perspectives.
In the last few years specifically,
we are really trying to explore what it is to be a human being
from a much more authentic, universal experience.
We say universality in our plays,
and the theater that we do at APT is classical in nature
so it's universal.
And it really requires us and demands of us
to explore what it is to be a human being
from every aspect, from every race, every ethnicity.
And to really start expanding that notion
of what we were comfortable saying is universal.
And I appreciate you being on this journey with us.
And with that in mind, this reading series specifically,
this second reading series of the "Out of the Woods" series
is focused on the BIPOC artists: Black, Indigenous,
and people of color playwrights, directors, and artists.
And I really do think that this is a step in our direction
of understanding each other in a much more profound way.
And to not be as afraid, to be exploring
what's different about us and what is the same about us.
And exploring those discussions and having those conversations.
And perhaps becoming a more equitable place.
And APT is on a journey to be a more equitable theater space,
and therefore, dare we hope,
help create a more equitable world.
I mean, there's nothing more imperative than us
understanding each other more fully now than ever.
And so we want to make sure that we are doing our part
as an arts institution.
So thank you for being an audience that is always curious
and always growing with us.
And in that vein, we are thrilled to invite you
to tonight's play.
I think this play, honestly,
is the most challenging of the plays that we've done.
And it speaks boldly to the moment and this idea
that all of us are being asked to be uncomfortable.
Start getting comfortable with being uncomfortable
and having difficult conversations.
And I think this play steps into that conversation
right in front of us.
We get put inside of people's lives,
messy human beings trying to navigate this world now.
And I think us being here, witnessing that,
it gives us an opportunity to stay vulnerable and open,
and question our own identities
and our own ideas of who we think we are.
And I think tonight's Lydia Diamond's Smart People
does that exceedingly well.
So thank you for being curious.
Thank you for your willingness to grow with APT.
After the show, we'd love you to grow more
by staying with us for the talk back
and talking with the artists involved.
And I want to thank the artists involved.
It's a difficult time to make art.
It's a gift to get to make art right now.
It's important that we make art,
and if this is the way we make it on Zoom,
I want to thank the artists tonight
because the play is challenging,
and I'm sure for those actors and directors
and everyone involved, it was,
brought up a lot of conversations among you all,
and a lot of burden.
And I want to thank you for taking that on
and presenting this piece tonight
for our audience at APT.
First and foremost, I need to thank Melisa Pereyra.
You know her as a core company member and actor at APT.
She's also a writer and a director.
And she directed tonight's reading of Smart People .
Thank you, Melisa.
I need to shout out to Melisa
because she first questioned and demanded and kindly prompted
and prodded us to move more quickly
than we thought we could on this journey
of becoming much more open to exploring the day,
the present day.
And asking us to speak to that as an artists' institution.
And I thank you, Melisa, for your bravery
and your insane intelligence and compassion.
And I love you, thank you.
I also want to thank the rest of the creative team:
Our dramaturge, Yasmin Mikhaiel,
and voice and text coach Joy Lanceta Coronel,
and sound designer Andre Pluess.
Stage manager Jacki Singleton and our cast.
I want to welcome Amy Kim Waschke to APT.
Thank you for being in our reading tonight, Amy.
As well as some actors that you know and love
from our past seasons: Cassia Thompson, Rasell Holt,
and Jeb Burris.
Thank you all for being here on Zoom tonight with us.
I need to do something and say a special thanks to the APT staff.
The artistic staff, the production staff,
the entire organization.
I cannot imagine a greater group of humans
to navigate this pandemic with.
And thank you for supporting us while we continue to make art.
It's important and you are important,
so thank you for your hard work.
And last but not least, I want to thank our season sponsors.
You are an incredible group of humans
that stayed with us through all of this summer,
and have supported these Zoom readings
and everything we do at APT.
We could not do it without you.
And you, our audience.
You are the best for your intrepid curiosity
and your faithfulness to the institution of APT.
We appreciate you and we are here for you,
and we will be here for you.
So there we go.
There's a short intermission tonight.
I'll stop talking now; we'll get on with the play.
Without further ado, please enjoy tonight's reading
of Smart People by Lydia Diamond.
[clock ticking]
- VALERIE: Valerie enters in leggings and a sweatshirt,
rumpled script in hand.
She sports very short dreadlocks.
She rehearses Portia with skill and authority.
It is early in the rehearsal process.
...You have ungently, Brutus, stole from my bed;
and yesternight, at supper, you suddenly arose and...
I have a thought.
I've been working on Portia's backstory,
and I'm thinking we can deepen her...
Oh...Okay.
Just drive it then?
Sure, just plow through... Yeah, okay.
But I...okay.
Yes, drive it hard.
You suddenly arose and walked about,
musing and sighing, with your arms across;
and when I ask'd you what the matter was,
You stared upon me with ungentle...
A five minute break? Now?
Could we just...okay.
Five minutes, thank you.
Terrific.
Valerie removes a pack of cigarettes
from her pocket and exits.
- BRIAN: Lights up on Brian , lecturing.
He holds a large stack of blue books.
Please disabuse yourselves of this notion
that I am obligated to teach you.
Neither do I have an obligation to bestow upon you my,
and I cite Harvard Review , 2002, "...effortless charisma
"and probingly insightful tutelage."
I am obligated only to show up and talk
for two hours twice a week.
Note my frustration.
I am not frustrated because I see in you
some sort of great, collective, untapped potential.
I am frustrated because I will never have these two hours back.
With the exception of three outstanding students,
you have all failed miserably.
So Mr. Goldstein, Ms. Jones, and Mr. Shwargdagala,
you have distinguished yourselves
as capable of not merely regurgitating information,
but of actually absorbing and metabolizing it.
You are excused from today's lecture.
Really, go!
I'm giving you the day off for being smart.
Go! Thank you.
He dumps the blue books into the garbage.
So, we shall begin again?
Okay, shake it off.
I don't hold grudges.
- GINNY: Light rises on Ginny,
presenting at a psychiatry conference.
Thank you for that flattering introduction, Dr. Thomason.
You all have a copy of the study, so we'll jump right in.
We've interviewed 350 third-generation
Asian American women.
Oh, you have a question.
Already.
- JACKSON: Light rises on Jackson,
removing bloodied surgical gown.
I did not raise my voice to Dr. Sandiet...
No, no.
I just simply pointed out the necessity of the amputation.
- GINNY: Yes, Asian is broad.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, it's there in your...
Could we hold our questions until after--
It's a good question, but if we could just--
You'll see I've addressed that in--
If we could return to-- You. Stop that.
- JACKSON: No, I categorically reject that.
I removed the first digit on the patient's left foot.
- GINNY: My findings debunk Western assumptions
naming primary reasons for anxiety and depression
in Asian American women as familial.
- JACKSON: I did ask Dr. Sandiet for permission.
He nodded.
I know what a nod is.
I speak fluent gestural shorthand.
I'm trying to tell you... Damn!
- VALERIE: Okay, so not from where we left off?
Forward to where then?
- JACKSON: I just need you to listen to me.
Because I'm your best doctor!
- GINNY: Disparaging of Western culture, really?
Pejorative? No.
Fine. Questions?
- BRIAN: Red shirt.
Yes, 85% is what it says , yes, very good, 85%.
You are all very good at math.
But people, what does it mean?
- VALERIE: I'm sorry, kneel here, at--
What, is Brutus sick,
and will he steal out of his wholesome bed, to dare...
Not at "upon my knees," really? Okay.
- BRIAN: These numbers represent real people who breathe,
and work, and fuck, and they don't have time for you
to sit in rooms and speculate about the 2% of the 75.3%
that when factored into 'a' equals an aggregate
of some bullshit.
- GINNY: The findings beg for a contextual framework.
- JACKSON: Context, people.
- BRIAN: I'm talking context.
- JACKSON: Go, look at him, not the chart.
Look at the patient!
- GINNY: One subject spoke of the American male's attraction
to her "otherness."
- VALERIE: What, is Brutus sick...
What , is Brutus sick... What is Brutus, sick ?...
- JACKSON: No, you looked at his insurance status.
Hell yes, that's exactly what I'm implying.
- BRIAN: Be the scientists persecuted
for voicing that which is not palatable.
What's the most non-palatable conclusion?
There is only one.
- JACKSON: He's a 73-year-old overweight diabetic
with a compromised heart and high blood pressure.
The toe needed to go.
- GINNY: Over and over, subjects noted the dominant culture's
perception of our subjects
as sexually promiscuous and scholastically dexterous.
- JACKSON: Three months' night rotations? Again?
No, I would not describe myself as a hothead.
Well, then fuck you.
No, I'm sorry, was that disrespectful?
What I meant to say was fuck you.
- BRIAN: I refuse to state it for you.
So one more time.
We return to the differentials: The stereotype-content model
predicts differentiated variables.
- JACKSON: I can see how that was disrespectful.
Please accept my apology.
Emergency, nights.
I understand, thank you.
- BRIAN: Incorporating a fundamental friend-foe judgment,
warmth, plus a capability judgment.
- VALERIE: And upon my knees-- I'm sorry,
[all speaking] [clock ticking]
- VALERIE: Upon my knees I charm you,
by my once-commended beauty,
[all speaking] [clock ticking]
- GINNY: Of the Western assumption
that Asian Americans are immune...
[all speaking] [clock ticking]
- VALERIE: Is Brutus sick?
- BRIAN: I do hope you're following this.
Questions? [bell rings]
- VALERIE: Valerie, leaning against the stage door wall
in the back of a theater.
She wears a short leather jacket
over her rehearsal skirt and corset.
- VALERIE: Yes... I know... I've just been busy.
I know I said I'd call earlier this week,
Bbt we're on the phone now.
My bad, no, I'm totally listening.
You just said, you said,
"The hydrangeas are bigger this year than ever."
See Mom, I listen.
Oh God... You're seriously going back to that?
A hungry group of fellow campaign volunteers
didn't judge you because I brought a tuna casserole
to a potluck.
No ma'am, tuna casserole carries no cultural
or class implications.
Seriously, I didn't take a watermelon.
I thought we agreed not to talk about the campaign.
Because of course you should vote for him,
and I'll just get annoyed and we'll argue,
so let's not talk about it.
That's ridiculous.
Yes, I know, Kennedy.
So it'd be okay if someone shot Hillary?
So, you think you'll make it to the show this time?
Sort of a lead... Of course I've stopped.
No, I know.
I promised, so I don't, okay?
Look, um, I know I said I'd stop asking,
but I was hoping you could spot me like just $300
to get me to the end of the month.
Yes, I know you put me through school.
Yes, and graduate school, 40,000.
Just a $300 loan until I get paid Friday.
Yes ma'am,yes ma'am, yes ma'am.
Could, could I talk to Daddy please?
Daddy? Hi, it's Valerie...
[timer dings]
- GINNY: Lights rise on Ginny
at an empty conference room table,
deep in her Blackberry .
Good, I was beginning to think I had the wrong place.
- BRIAN: Committee for the study of minority matriculation,
retention, and recruitment?
- GINNY:Someone was very proud of that.
The meeting is supposed to be here right, 12:30, right?
-BRIAN: Ah, they changed it.
- GINNY: When? I didn't get any...
- BRIAN: Today. - GINNY: I don't think so.
I never got a... They didn't...
Oh, they changed it to...
- BRIAN AND GINNY: 1:30.
- BRIAN: Yes, I think they rescheduled
so they wouldn't have to buy us lunch.
- GINNY: Well then, you're early.
- BRIAN: I'm hiding from my research assistants.
Does it not strike you as strange?
- GINNY: I'm sorry?
- BRIAN: I said, doesn't it strike you as--
- GINNY: Strike you, I got that.
Strange what?
- BRIAN: Strange, that if they wanted diversity,
institutionally, they wouldn't just hire
some people of color, right?
- GINNY: Absolutely.
You didn't tell me your name.
- BRIAN: Brian White.
- GINNY: Ginny, half Chinese, half Japanese.
- BRIAN: Brian White.
- GINNY: Of course, I see how I did that.
So your work?
- BRIAN: Cognitive neuroscience, when I can get to it.
Recently I've spent too much of my time teaching children.
- GINNY: Children?
- BRIAN: Yes, indeed, at the leading research institution
in the world, I'm teaching 101 survey courses to undergrads.
It's my penance.
- GINNY: What did you do?
Wait a minute, oh my God... You're that guy.
- BRIAN: What? - GINNY: Your op-ed.
You started the whole race firestorm.
- BRIAN: In the flesh.
- GINNY: I should have recognized you.
You're a big deal.
- BRIAN: Are you googling me in front of me?
- GINNY: "White," the race guy, is that your real name?
- BRIAN: Yeah, I get that a lot.
- GINNY: So, cognitive neuroscience...
- BRIAN: I started in neuropsych...
Or maybe I could let you just--
I started in neuropsych,
detoured through biology and sociology,
and sort of migrated to neuroscience, where I stayed.
- GINNY: Does one really "migrate" to neuroscience?
- BRIAN: I did.
And you're Ginny Yang, psychology golden girl.
- GINNY: I prefer "wunderkind."
How do you know me? - BRIAN: Ah, I googled you.
You weren't there.
You do Asian stereotyping.
- GINNY: Asian American; women; mostly third generation.
So you know me why?
- BRIAN: I've been criticized
for focusing on too narrow a demographic.
I was considering broadening my parameters to be more inclusive.
- GINNY: Of?
- BRIAN: People other than Blacks, whites, and Latinos.
- GINNY: So did you? - BRIAN: Huh?
- GINNY: Broaden your racial parameters?
- BRIAN: No, no, I didn't. - GINNY: Why?
- BRIAN: There are too many of you, broadly, Asians.
No single social experience to speak of.
- GINNY: True. - BRIAN: It was untenable.
- GINNY: Untenable, or inconvenient?
- BRIAN: Untenable. - GINNY: Fair enough.
Have you done one of these
diversity committee things before?
- BRIAN: Well, I'm the go-to white guy for these.
Because I study race, and of course, because I care.
And you? - GINNY: I generally decline.
I don't know.
I'm uncomfortable celebrating my marginalization
with other disgruntled marginalized people.
It's not my job
to make the institution behave appropriately.
In truth, I lost a bet to a Middle Eastern man
in my department.
And I'm a twoken. - BRIAN: Tooken?
- GINNY: Token, twoken.
I proudly represent not one,
but two underrepresented populations.
- BRIAN: Underrepresented, really?
'Cause I see your people everywhere...
- GINNY: Women? - BRIAN: The Asian people--
- GINNY: You're mistaken.
My "people" mostly frequent the hard sciences.
- BRIAN: As do I.
I can't throw a stone without hitting a...
My politics are such that I can make that joke.
With people who know me.
- GINNY: You'll never know me well enough
for that to be funny.
- BRIAN: Have dinner with me? - GINNY: No.
- BRIAN: I can do that better.
Please may I take you to dinner? - GINNY: No.
- BRIAN: You're a psychologist? - GINNY: Yes.
- BRIAN: Just the book kind, or do you actually shrink heads?
- GINNY: I write books and see clients.
- BRIAN: So then you know how vulnerable a man is
when asking a woman to dinner?
- GINNY: I don't study the science of mating rituals.
- BRIAN: Not mating, just dinner.
- GINNY: Hmm.
- BRIAN: I really did like your paper.
And I'm not just flattering you because I've insulted you.
Repeatedly. - GINNY: Thank you.
- BRIAN: And again, if you knew me...
May I flatter you for just another second?
- GINNY: If you must.
- BRIAN: I like the way you write.
It's smart, accessible, well-argued.
It was a good read.
And there was a picture of you.
You photograph well. - GINNY: Thank you.
What did your last girlfriend look like?
Demographically speaking.
- BRIAN: I don't date demographically.
- GINNY: Humor me. - BRIAN: Blonde, pretty, tall.
Sort of old-money, good bone structure... Yours?
- GINNY: Mine?
- BRIAN: Your demographic preferences in men,
if you date men, and that's cool if you don't.
- GINNY: Generally, I don't date.
Can I see that?
How do you... oh, here.
That's my number.
- BRIAN: Okay, thank you. - GINNY: It's just my number.
Not a promise. - BRIAN: I'll keep that in mind.
[timer dings]
- VALERIE: Light rises on Valerie
sitting on a hospital gurney.
She holds a bloody towel to her head.
She wears a linen rehearsal corset and petticoat,
also covered with blood.
[clock ticking]
- JACKSON: I'm sorry I kept you waiting.
- VALERIE: Yeah, uh-huh.
- JACKSON: They didn't clean this up?
- VALERIE: No, no one did anything.
Waiting room was empty, and still there I sat,
bleeding all over myself for hours.
- JACKSON: A nurse didn't... - VALERIE: No!
No one did anything.
- JACKSON: I can tell you're angry...
- VALERIE: Yes, yeah, yes, I am, very...yes.
I've got a hole in my face; it's bleeding.
That's a problem... This is a lot of blood.
There's a lot of blood here and this is my face...
My only way out of a great deal of debt
hinges on my face not being permanently jacked up.
- JACKSON: It's fine... Now hold on.
A nurse should have taken care of this.
Can you lean back, please?
There.
- VALERIE: Will I get to see a doctor?
- JACKSON: I'm sorry?
- VALERIE: I get that I don't rate a fricken nurse,
but might I see a doctor at some point?
- JACKSON: Dr. Jackson Moore. - VALERIE: Oh, sorry.
- JACKSON: It happens.
- VALERIE: You don't have on a name tag
or a white coat or anything.
Will it need stitches? - JACKSON: Yes.
- VALERIE: How many? - JACKSON: It matters?
- VALERIE: It's my face... - JACKSON: But the number?
- VALERIE: Will it scar? - JACKSON: I don't know.
- VALERIE: The cab driver said five.
- JACKSON: Five what? - VALERIE: Stitches.
- JACKSON: Oh, well, the cab driver should know.
- VALERIE: Please make them nice?
And small.
- JACKSON: I'm very good at stiches.
- VALERIE: It's my face.
- JACKSON: I got an A in stitches.
- VALERIE: My face is important.
I'm an actress.
- JACKSON: Well, thank God, that's good.
- VALERIE: What?
- JACKSON: Otherwise you'd be one of those
weird medieval fair people.
And I didn't think we did those.
- VALERIE: We? - JACKSON: Our people.
- VALERIE: Oh, no, I'm in a show.
Shakespeare. [Jackson laughs]
- JACKSON: I didn't think our people did that either.
- VALERIE: You should get out more.
- JACKSON: So who hit you? - VALERIE: No.
No, no, I walked into a flat.
I explained that to the officer in the lobby,
I told the woman who checked me in, I told the triage nurse.
Seriously, what does a Black woman have to do
to convince you guys that she hasn't been beaten?
- JACKSON: Well, the triage nurse has legal imperative.
We make her ask.
I, on the other hand, was just concerned.
Most of the heads of pretty young women I have to stitch up
got made that way by some jealous asshole.
- VALERIE: I walked into a flat.
It's there in those papers. - JACKSON: A flat?
- VALERIE: A piece of the set.
There was a jagged thing, a nail, maybe, and...
- JACKSON: Seven. - VALERIE: It was just very dark
and I entered at a run and, and it...seven?
- JACKSON: Stitches.
I'd guess seven, since you care so much.
But I promise to make them small and pretty.
When I'm done, it'll be almost as though
you have a third eyebrow.
So no one will even notice the scar.
- VALERIE: That was supposed to be funny?
Wait, wait, will it hurt?
- JACKSON: Of course. - VALERIE: A lot?
- JACKSON: I numbed you up.
You'll be fine, I promise.
He sews.
I do see theater.
I saw Lord Help That Child That Got His Mama
at the Atrium last fall.
And um, The Brotha's Got a Song to Sang .
- VALERIE: Oh, well...
- JACKSON: Yeah, see, this brother was a gang banger
and his mama kept prayin' to set him straight,
and he accidentally shot his sister,
and when he was in prison he got saved,
and then he found out
it was really the neighborhood drug dealer
that killed his sister, and they all sang a song,
went to church, and lived happily ever after.
- VALERIE: Which play was that? - JACKSON: Both.
You're done.
Eight. - VALERIE: You said seven.
- JACKSON: Sue me.
I'll send someone in with paperwork.
Take four ibuprofen as soon as you can,
and try not to walk into any more walls...flats.
- VALERIE: You're not gonna give me any?
- JACKSON: Advil?
They charge an arm and a leg for those.
I promise, they'll cost less over the counter.
I wasn't implying that your abusive,
drug-dealing pimp boyfriend isn't a good provider.
I just noticed that you don't have insurance.
- VALERIE: Thanks.
- JACKSON: Some friends and I run this neighborhood clinic.
It's not the Ritz, but we're good doctors.
It's a better place to go for something like this.
Well, anyway, we give out free birth control...
- VALERIE: No, I don't need-- - JACKSON: I wasn't--
- VALERIE: Of course not.
- JACKSON: Anyway, here's the card.
I've written my number on the back
should you have follow-up questions about your head.
You don't have to go there, but do go to a doctor
and have the sutures removed in a week.
- VALERIE: Okay, thanks, sure, thanks.
Valerie turns the card over. [timer dings]
- BRIAN: Light on Brian in his office area, on the phone,
looking at his computer.
You're the dean, Steve, of course this is a scold.
I'm looking at it: "In reference to comments made..."
Calling my attention to article 2.b.g
of the teacher-student ethics manual.
I bring in so much research money, and you're sweating me
over an undergrad survey course?
And never mind why I'm teaching an undergraduate survey course.
Verbal denigrations?
I did not... That's what the class is.
"The Sociological Implications of Scientific Methodology."
Yes, I gave them an upbraiding,
but I didn't call them stupid racists.
Okay, I did not call them stupid.
This isn't about the class.
- GINNY: Ginny, in session with a young woman.
Scenes alternate.
We ended your last session with a goal.
Right, Akiko?
You were to practice clearly stating your opinions
to authority figures.
And how did that go?
In English please, Akiko.
- BRIAN: I didn't kick out the students of color.
I excused the ones who actually got it.
Hold on, let me look it up.
- GINNY: You're too hard on yourself.
You've definitely made progress.
But is what I think really important?
- BRIAN: It's right here.
Goldstein, that's Jewish, right?
Biracial, really?
What and what?
Oh, I thought it was a Jewfro.
LaTasha Jones, okay, fair enough.
I have 125 kids.
Shwargdagala, Jesus, fine.
- GINNY: Are you able to know, in the moment of interaction,
that you are having an opposing thought?
- BRIAN: So I sent home my three kids of color.
Do you not find it problematic that in a survey class of 125,
there were only three?
- GINNY: I'm hearing you say that it's what you don't say
in the moment that makes you anxious.
- BRIAN: And this is tragic how?
- GINNY: And how does that anxiety feel in your body?
- BRIAN: Steve, Steve, listen to me.
All they had to do was look at the numbers
and write a decent argument for an obvious conclusion.
- GINNY: English, Akiko.
- BRIAN: To a person... Well, to a white person,
they manipulated the stats to do what felt best to them.
Racist is not the worst thing you can call a person.
Not a person whose behavior is racist.
- GINNY: English, Akiko.
- BRIAN: That's bullshit.
Yes it is, yes it is.
Fine, then you're racist.
Are you okay?
Good, I thought maybe I'd killed you
with the force of my ninja-like word.
- GINNY: Yes, a very little bit, not conversationally.
Still, I want to remind you that in Japanese,
a direct utterance of the word "no,"
eee-yeh , is considered offensive.
- BRIAN: Hi, Vicki, I lost the signal.
Could you put me back through to Steve, please?
- GINNY: If I said to you, "Your dress is green,"
and clearly it is not, rather than eee-yeh , "no,"
you would reply che-gow , "not quite" or "maybe"...
It's an example.
What others might perceive as submissive or passive
is simply a culturally specific way of communicating.
- BRIAN: Yeah, I'm still holding.
- GINNY: "Others," the dominant culture.
Yes, whites, well, anyone,
even second- and third-generation Asian Americans
have embraced these values, exactly.
And so, to be heard by the dominant culture,
how might you state your--
- BRIAN: Sorry, Steve, lost you there.
I don't think you're racist.
Why the e-mail?
Clearly, you're documenting...
Do I need to worry?
- GINNY: I'm simply trying to help you build strategies, um,
an awareness of certain dynamics.
Well, I, sure I... I'm sure we all, humans,
have struggled with authority on occasion.
[timer dings]
I see we're out of time.
Let's keep this in mind for next week.
- VALERIE: Lights rises on Valerie in a chair facing out
in Brian's lab area.
She wears a new Obama T-shirt.
On her forehead now are just a couple of butterfly Band-Aids.
A complicated web of electrodes is fastened to her head.
- BRIAN: Brian, off-stage, speaks into a mic.
Are we almost done?
The flyer said two hours.
- BRIAN: We pay for overtime.
- VALERIE: It's not that,
it's just I have to make it to rehearsal...
- BRIAN: Could you tilt your head just a bit to the right?
Right, please. - VALERIE: Sorry.
- BRIAN: And center, great.
Watch the projection screen.
I'll show you some random photographs.
Remember, try not to think.
We're monitoring your brain's immediate response
to visual stimuli.
- VALERIE: So I shouldn't, like, form the words
in my mind of what I see as I'm seeing it?
- BRIAN: Please, just take it in, okay?
Lights dim, Valerie is shown slides projected
on the fourth wall.
- VALERIE: Okay.
- BRIAN: As soon as you've seen it, just say "Next."
- VALERIE: Okay, next.
[click]
Next. [click]
Next, no, wait, I know that person.
- BRIAN: What?
- VALERIE: Where did you get these pictures?
- BRIAN: Damn it.
- VALERIE: Yeah, she's an actress.
Brian enters, begins to remove electrodes
through the following.
- BRIAN: Well, that's a phenomenal waste of three hours.
- VALERIE: What's the problem?
She's the only one I recognized.
I did a commercial with her last year.
- BRIAN: It compromises the control.
We hire models; it's easier.
- VALERIE: Could we just, like, not mention it?
- BRIAN: No, we couldn't "like" not mention it.
Don't worry, you still get paid.
Brian accidently touches her Band-Aids.
- VALERIE: Ouch. - BRIAN: Sorry.
What happened to your head?
- VALERIE: I didn't get hit. - BRIAN: Okay.
- VALERIE: I'm an actor, so $50 an hour
for looking at pictures seems great.
And it beats housecleaning.
- BRIAN: You clean houses? - VALERIE: Yeah.
What's your experiment about?
- BRIAN: Study. - VALERIE: Fine, study.
- BRIAN: We're observing neurological responses
the brain has to various images.
How the brain is affected by race.
The most exciting developments right now
now derive from developments from neuroscience
as much as from neuropsychology.
It's phenomenal, the rigorous computational analyses
of highly defined brain images.
- VALERIE: Valerie has joined Brian near the laptop.
- BRIAN: So that's a brain, okay?
I look at the way each area lights up
depending on what images you're shown.
We monitor changes in body chemistry, pupil dilation,
adrenaline levels, even the way your blood oxygenates.
It's pretty comprehensive.
- VALERIE: What do you want to find?
- BRIAN: I want to prove that all whites are racist.
- VALERIE: Wow, that's kind of hot when a white guy says that.
You didn't know that?
- BRIAN: Well, I guess a few women have...
- VALERIE: That people are racist.
- BRIAN: Yes.
My work is more complicated than that.
You're a student here?
- VALERIE: Just graduated, M.F.A. Acting.
So we're done here? - BRIAN: We're done.
- VALERIE: Can I put my name on a list or something,
so I can do more of these?
- BRIAN: I'm not sure how much you'd be called.
Most of my peers don't use people of color...
Ah...Black respondents.
But I can certainly make sure you're on it, the list.
- VALERIE: You're the only one who studies Black people?
- BRIAN: No, I'm the only one trying to factor in Blacks
for control groups and also as respondents.
It's a nuanced difference.
- VALERIE: Not terribly.
White people are more comfortable
keeping us under the microscope.
- BRIAN: Well put.
But again, not me.
You don't seem quite the housecleaning type.
- VALERIE: You could use someone to help you out around here.
- BRIAN: Cleaning? - VALERIE: Sure.
- BRIAN: I could probably find some things for you to do.
I don't know about cleaning.
It makes me uncomfortable.
Can you do Excel?
Do you mind tedious?
Sorting, filing? - VALERIE: Yes.
I need six more hours of anything a week to meet my goal.
- BRIAN: Your goal? - VALERIE: Rent.
- BRIAN: Brian watches her go.
[clock chimes]
- GINNY: Hello?
- BRIAN: Hi, this is Brian White, calling for Ginny Yang.
- GINNY: Speaking.
- BRIAN: Thank you for your number.
- GINNY: Again, why were you broadening your parameters?
- BRIAN: Good, thank you.
I'm well, and how are you?
- GINNY: So something you said when we met,
you said you read my work
to broaden your racial parameters.
- BRIAN: I also said that you're attractive.
- GINNY: Why, if your data collective was productive,
would you need to do that?
- BRIAN: It seemed like the right thing.
- GINNY: Right why? - BRIAN: Inclusivity.
- GINNY: Political correctness?
- BRIAN: Because some random public agenda
made me feel guilty?
No, because science should leave no stone uncovered.
- GINNY: Unturned. - BRIAN: Beg your pardon?
- GINNY: Nothing, sorry.
- BRIAN: So, about my previous offer?
- GINNY: Dinner? - BRIAN: Hoping...
- GINNY: Hold on, let me look.
- VALERIE: Light rises on Valerie.
[phone chiming]
- JACKSON: Jackson.
- VALERIE: Dr. Moore? - JACKSON: Yes.
- VALERIE: Oh, Valerie Johnston.
I was in the emergency room a few days ago.
You gave me your card.
The bloody Black girl with the weird clothes...
and, well, I was hoping I could make an appointment
at your clinic, you mentioned your clinic,
to um, have the sutures removed.
- JACKSON: This isn't the clinic number.
- VALERIE: You wrote this number on the back of the card,
so I thought...
- GINNY: Are you there? - VALERIE: Are you there?
- BRIAN: Yes. - JACKSON: Yes.
- GINNY: Hold on.
- VALERIE: I thought you wanted me to...
- JACKSON: To set up an appointment,
you need to call the number on the front of the card.
- VALERIE: Oh, sure, okay.
- GINNY: Sorry about that. - BRIAN: Dinner tomorrow, 6:00?
- GINNY: Oh, I have a client. - BRIAN: 8:00?
- GINNY: Wednesday? - BRIAN: Friday, 6 o'clock?
- GINNY: Uh, no good, I have a symposium.
- BRIAN: Saturday, brunch?
[phone rings] - GINNY: Eh.
- BRIAN: Dinner? - GINNY: Yes.
- JACKSON: Jackson. - VALERIE: Yeah, I got that.
- BRIAN: How about the Harvest, Saturday, 8:00?
- JACKSON: You got that?
- GINNY: Okay. - BRIAN: Great.
- VALERIE: Your name, I got that.
- JACKSON: This is...?
- VALERIE: I just called you; Valerie.
- JACKSON: The clinic takes messages.
Nikki's pretty good at getting back to you.
- VALERIE: You're serious?
- JACKSON: The receptionist should call you back.
- VALERIE: You're trying to make me feel like an asshole?
- JACKSON: I beg your pardon?
- VALERIE: Okay, you wrote your number on the back of the card.
Your personal cell phone number, right?
- JACKSON: I'm not following you.
- VALERIE: The clinic's number is on the front of the card.
Of course a reasonable person would know
to call that number for an appointment.
But I called your cell phone because you gave me the number.
So here I am calling you,
and you act like you don't remember me?
No one doesn't remember me.
- JACKSON: Well, Valerie Johnson...
- VALERIE: Johnston.
- JACKSON: Well, Valerie Johnston, had you said,
"I think you're a charismatic and interesting person
"and I'd like to get to know you,"
we could have proceeded in that vein.
You, however, first made reference to your need
to schedule an appointment.
- VALERIE: Do you always talk like that?
- JACKSON: Like what?
- VALERIE: "You however first made reference to... "?
- JACKSON: And still my point...
- VALERIE: "And still, my point ..."
- JACKSON: I'm beginning to regret giving you the number.
- VALERIE: I'm beginning to regret calling it.
- JACKSON: I wasn't trying to make you feel like an asshole.
- VALERIE: Of course not.
Okay, well, I'll call the clinic.
Thanks for your help.
- JACKSON: Wait. - VALERIE: I'll call the clinic.
[phone ringing]
Hi, Jackson.
See how I did that?
Because your number pops up here on the screen,
and it's the same number I just called.
- JACKSON: Despite your abundance of charm,
I would like to cook dinner for you.
- VALERIE: Because this went so well.
- JACKSON: Because that's what I wanted to do
when I wrote my number on the card.
[bell chiming]
Early morning at Jackson's clinic.
He's on the phone with his brother
and preparing for patients.
He hasn't even turned the open sign around.
I told you not to call me while I'm at work.
I don't have time for this.
Listen...no, you listen.
Fine, yeah, it's a sickness, you're sick...fine.
No, you made your own choices.
You did not trip and fall on top of a crack pipe.
Good, I'm glad you're straight now.
That's great Harold, I'm very proud of you.
I just need for you to hear me clearly.
You find a halfway house,
you find your last crack ho and shack with her,
you live in the fucking subway for all I care,
but you will not drag all that craziness into my mama's house.
I will hurt you.
I will come to Mama's house and I swear to God I will kill you.
I will kill you in front of her and your boy
if you bring harm to this family.
You get the money I sent?
Yeah, 500.
Hey, Harold?
Use it for food.
We're not open yet.
- GINNY: I'm sorry I... your door was...
- JACKSON: Do you need help? - GINNY: I called yesterday.
- JACKSON: Are you unsafe in your home?
- GINNY: I don't think so?
- JACKSON: Are you here because someone or something
makes you feel endangered in your home?
- GINNY: Oh, God, no.
- JACKSON: Okay,I can show you to an examination room.
[clock ticking]
- GINNY: Oh, no, I'm Ginny.
You're Dr. Moore?
Yes, there it is, on your...
It's nice of you to extend yourself.
Nicole said to-- so you read the documents that I...
- JACKSON: You sent literature?
- GINNY: Your nurse-- - JACKSON: No.
- GINNY: Assistant? Nicole-- - JACKSON: Nikki.
- GINNY: She said-- - JACKSON: The receptionist.
- GINNY: She said that you would have read--
- JACKSON: I'm sorry, I would have?
- GINNY: To prepare for our discussion--
- JACKSON: No. Read? Why?
- GINNY: Okay, I could walk you through it.
I spoke with Nicole... - JACKSON: Nikki.
- GINNY: Nikki, last Wednesday.
This isn't going well.
- JACKSON: So I don't have time to make this a big thing.
You can leave your samples on the counter.
I'm sure someone will get back to you.
We could really use XR versions of Saxagliptin,
whatever you have.
- GINNY: I'm sorry? - JACKSON: Samples.
Anything diabetes.
You're welcome to leave the brochures.
- GINNY: I don't understand.
- JACKSON: You didn't bring samples?
- GINNY: I think you think I'm with a pharmaceutical...
I'm with the study.
- JACKSON: Nikki scheduled you? - Ginny: With the University?
- JACKSON: The University? - GINNY: Harvard.
- JACKSON: Oh, of course, the University.
So, what do you want?
- GINNY: Bodies. - JACKSON: We're not a morgue.
- GINNY: Alive ones, Asians.
Specifically your Chinatown traffic?
For a study.
- JACKSON: We don't do studies. - GINNY: As a policy?
- JACKSON: Our patients aren't guinea pigs.
- GINNY: I think you misunderstand.
If you would just read the-- - JACKSON: No.
You University people come in here all the time.
We're busy here.
We're trying to save lives.
- GINNY: If you say so...
- JACKSON: Unless you're here to offer resources...
- GINNY: If you could please just read the study...
- JACKSON: So presumptuous.
- GINNY: I spoke with the... Nikki.
Maybe you could just read the--
- JACKSON: Yeah, I'll be sure to do that.
- GINNY: You won't, but you should.
Just do, please.
Please.
- JACKSON: Jackson throws the study into the wastebasket.
[timer dings]
- VALERIE: Valerie, on the phone outside the theater,
wears a jacket over her costume
and now sports a rather impressive Grecian wig.
Yes, I'm on hold for Emily Rossner.
I've been holding for like five minutes now.
Our publicist said to call at 1:15.
Valerie Johnston, Julius Caesar at Shakespeare Rep.
Yes, I'll hold.
[clock ticking]
I'm holding for-- Oh, Emily, thanks for making--
I auditioned, um... I auditioned.
How did I come to play Portia?
Well, I did undergrad at Tish, M.F.A. at...
Oh, okay, you have my bio.
Well, there was a posting on the hotline, the equity hotline,
and I scheduled an audition and I auditioned
with a monologue from Lady Macbeth,
you know, "Screw your courage to the sticking..."
Oh...I hadn't thought of the casting choices as brave.
I mean, I guess I'm young,
but I'm told that I have a certain gravitas.
And I know Portia speaks of having been Brutus's wife
for some time, of being older, but this is relative,
she may have married at twelve.
Oh, that...okay, well, it's not really color-blind casting.
I'm his wife.
Well, neither are any of the actors actually Roman.
Really, really it's just me, an Asian spear-carrier,
and a Croatian Caius Trebonius.
Conrad's a traditionalist.
It takes place when it would have taken place:
realistic design elements...
I'm very excited to make my professional debut
at Boston Shakes--okay then.
Um, thank you for your time...
If you have any more questions, feel free to call or...
[dial tone]
- BRIAN: Brian and Jackson sit on a bench in a locker room.
They've been playing basketball.
- JACKSON: Wait, wait... What did you say she said?
- BRIAN: It wasn't even what she said.
It was how she said it.
It was tone...tone.
Like...like "You should be so lucky."
Like coming off of her in waves.
- JACKSON: Oh, that shit's hot. - BRIAN: What?
- JACKSON: Yeah, generally, if "You should be so lucky"
is comin' off of the girl, it means, "You should be so lucky."
- BRIAN: I'm just off my game. - JACKSON: You're off your game?
- BRIAN: That's funny?
- JACKSON: I don't know if you can be off of it,
if you wasn't ever on it. [laughs]
- BRIAN: I've been on it.
- JACKSON: Jackson has wiped himself down,
put a bottle of water on a towel
and swabbed at his armpits,
and is spraying an aerosol deodorant under his arms,
then, for good measure, everywhere.
- BRIAN: Ugh, you're going back to work like that?
- JACKSON: Nah, I have a date.
- BRIAN: You're not gonna shower?
- JACKSON: Mm, I don't wanna wash off my pheromones.
[sniffs] [laughs]
So why are you off your game?
- BRIAN: I meant at work.
The department... something's shifting.
They're fucking with my money,
pulling back my research assistants...
- JACKSON: But you're the man, right?
Aren't you like their golden boy or something?
What'd you do? - BRIAN: I'm not like you.
I don't do things.
I called a roomful of undergrads racist.
Then I called my dean racist.
I may have intimated that the institution is racist
in an op-ed and on NPR.
- JACKSON: That's funny. - BRIAN: But only to the degree
that all historically white institutions are.
- JACKSON: Oh, so professionally,
you're almost as self-destructive as I am.
Okay, I'm liking this.
- BRIAN: Oh no, what did you do now?
- JACKSON: I cut off a fat old man's toe and then quit,
and then I begged for my job back.
- BRIAN: You did what? - JACKSON: Oh no, no, no,
you're the one who fucked up this time.
What happened?
- BRIAN: They've been throwing money at me
to say this stuff for years, you know that.
I mean, only now that my numbers are coming in
like I knew they would and I can back it up,
it's as though they're hearing it for the first time.
- JACKSON: Right? They pump you up.
You the man...then as soon as you take a little initiative,
boom, three months nighttime rotations.
- BRIAN: So listen, they invited me to do this lecture,
kind of out of nowhere...
JACKSON: Making you sing for your supper?
- BRIAN: Or atone for my sins.
I'm definitely being asked to supplicate,
but I don't know to whom and I don't know for what reason.
Anyway, I wondered if you would come.
- JACKSON: Sure, if I'm not working.
Text me the info.
So, you think you're gonna tap that ass?
- BRIAN: I don't tap ass.
I make sweet love to a woman.
- JACKSON: Once every five years.
- BRIAN: Fuck you. - JACKSON: Whew, pheremones.
[Jackson laughs] [bell rings]
- GINNY: Ginny, with shopping bags draped over her shoulder.
No, no, she gave me the coupon last week.
I spent $375, and the sales girl gave me...hold on.
Here, look, here's the receipt.
Who? I don't know her name.
I come in here regularly and spend enough money
that on the rare occasion I am given a coupon,
and I'm told that I will be able to redeem said coupon,
I expect the common courtesy of...
Yes, it does say that it's expired,
but I didn't look at it.
I was told it would be honored.
I could have used it then, but I ordered the skirt,
the skirt that you didn't have in my size
and I was told you would honor this...
Can you back up please?
Thank you.
So I can just leave this here,
but wouldn't you really rather have the commission
than quibble with me over, let's see, what would that be...
10% of 250, that's like, uh, $25?
See the big picture.
You'd lose a regular customer and commission
over the $25 you think you're saving a company
that doesn't give you benefits.
Thank you.
Visa. [bell dings]
- JACKSON: In the dark, the muffled and guttural sounds
of the final moments of climactic lovemaking.
Lights rise on Jackson and Valerie untangling themselves
from the couch, Jackson 's pants around one leg.
- VALERIE: Valerie, adjusting her skirt
and pulling her panties up.
I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought.
Where was I? - JACKSON: Housecleaning.
- VALERIE: Right, housecleaning.
Well, I used to make 15 an hour.
But now my rates are as high as 35.
You just go in and you do an amazing job, little tricks:
wash the windows, the lightbulbs, it just sparkles,
and they don't know why.
On the fourth week, you tell them you're sorry,
but you realize you've overbooked.
Usually, you'll get a raise right there.
If they don't, they'll call two weeks later and say,
"Name your price," and I say,
"Well, if I squeeze you in on Tuesday mornings,
"I'd have to give up a job that pays 25 an hour..."
And there it is.
- JACKSON: They kiss.
- VALERIE: I've never done this before.
- JACKSON: Really? - VALERIE: On a first date.
- JACKSON: Technically, mid first date.
- VALERIE: Really, and I'm not just saying that.
I'm a fourth date girl.
- JACKSON: So arbitrary. - VALERIE: I know, right?
- JACKSON: I made peach cobbler, if you'd like dessert.
- VALERIE: Okay.
- JACKSON: He tries to pour more wine, bottle's empty.
I could get more, but we'd have to switch to red.
- VALERIE: Unless you want more, but I'm, I'm good.
- JACKSON: If you're sure.
I have a nice Malbec.
- VALERIE: Did your mama teach you to fry fish like that?
- JACKSON: My grandmama.
She's from Virginia.
- VALERIE: Ah, that's why greens, cornbread,
catfish, and a peach cobbler.
How do you eat like that and stay so...?
Well, it was delicious.
- JACKSON: Thank you.
I figured you liked it after your third piece.
- VALERIE: Two. - JACKSON: Three, I counted.
There's nothing hotter than a woman with an appetite.
I'm impressed and surprised that
you handle a hot sauce bottle so well.
- VALERIE: What are you saying?
- JACKSON: And the real test
was when you asked for vinegar for the greens.
That's just downright sexy and a little 'hood.
- VALERIE: I don't know what that means.
- JACKSON: No, just... - VALERIE: You were testing me?
- JACKSON: Whoa, don't get touchy.
- VALERIE: You purposely didn't put hot sauce on the table
to see if I would ask for it?
- JACKSON: No...
- VALERIE: So you just wouldn't expect me to use condiments
if I wasn't, how would you say, "down"?
- JACKSON: You're a little saddity.
I wouldn't have presumed to know
your relationship to hot sauce or vinegar.
- VALERIE: Malbec please.
- JACKSON: Jackson exits to get the wine.
- VALERIE: Valeriemakes halfhearted attempts
to restore herself
to her original first date unrumpledness.
- GINNY: Ginny and Brian in a restaurant.
- BRIAN: And then he said, "Professor White,
"I just couldn't bring myself to hand in anything
"beneath my own standards."
- GINNY: No!
- BRIAN: Really, and I said, "Well, that's late."
And he proceeds to explain that
he is not only a straight A student,
but was third in his class at Exeter.
And I said, "Well, this is college.
"Maybe if you'd cared less about standards
"and more about deadlines, you'd have been first."
And he says, "No disrespect intended, Dr. White,
"but that's utterly out of line."
- GINNY: Utterly?
- BRIAN: Wait, wait, there's more.
He asked me where I went to school,
and when I said undergrad Cornell,
master's and first doctorate Princeton,
and second doctorate Harvard,
and he said, "No, no, high school."
- GINNY: Oh my god.
- BRIAN: And explained that third in a class at Exeter
would have been among the first at any public school
and most private schools in the country.
- GINNY: That's ridiculous.
- BRIAN: So I said, "When I went to public high school,
"they had a name for young men like you..."
- GINNY: Asshole! - BRIAN: Right, asshole.
- GINNY: I miss undergrads, they're cute.
- BRIAN: So you don't teach at all?
- GINNY: Occasionally-- a graduate seminar.
Mostly they leave me to my research.
- BRIAN: I went to Michigan undergrad.
- GINNY: Well, that's okay.
- BRIAN: I wasn't embarrassed, just sharing.
- GINNY: Of course.
- BRIAN: Brian takes a sip of wine.
- JACKSON: Truce, please.
I cooked.
- VALERIE: You know, to a saddity girl,
saddity's like fightin' words. - JACKSON: I'm sorry.
- VALERIE: When we were kids,
my cousins in Detroit called me saddity.
But they wouldn't beat me up.
They were industrious and would take me out
to meet their friends and I'd end up getting my
"proper-talkin-she-think- she-white" ass beat.
Every time. - JACKSON: They set you up.
- VALERIE: Of course they did.
And I never saw it coming.
It's a nice name you have there.
- JACKSON: It was supposed to be presidential...
- VALERIE: You must be a great disappointment.
- JACKSON: Naw, my mom's proud.
I told her I'd be a surgeon when I was in the fourth grade.
So I applied myself.
You?
- VALERIE: Oh, a great disappointment.
Hugely disappointing.
But they made their bed.
They used to take me to all these cultural things,
the ballet, the orchestra, plays.
Not for their undying love of art,
but because they wanted to make me into someone
who could get into an Ivy League and graduate and make money.
So there's tension.
It'll be okay when I marry a rich doctor
and stop this starving artist thing. [laughs]
[Jackson laughs half-heartedly]
- JACKSON: I just realized, I have so much work to do
we should call it a night.
- VALERIE: You didn't just. - JACKSON: No, I didn't.
I'm sorry, you're offended?
- VALERIE: You dismissed me.
I said one stupid thing.
You're supposed to just not call me back.
Not end the date abruptly, especially after we...
- JACKSON: No really, I'm tired.
The curtain just came down.
I've been on night shifts in emergency,
then going directly to my clinic.
- VALERIE: It's fine.
I've got an early cleaning job tomorrow.
- JACKSON: And I'm still not getting the housecleaning thing.
- VALERIE: You don't have to.
- JACKSON: Well, you're smart.
Seems like your energies could go to something more productive.
- VALERIE: I'm an actor. - JACKSON: Why?
- VALERIE: Because it's what I do better than anyone else can.
It's my contribution to the world.
JACKSON: You don't think the housekeeping thing
sets us back a little?
My grandma and mom cleaned houses
so I could go to medical school and make something of my family.
- VALERIE: Not to help people? - JACKSON: Say what?
- VALERIE: You went to med school to help people, right?
- JACKSON: And your deft portrayal of Portia
empowers our people how?
- VALERIE: I volunteer for Obama.
- JACKSON: I take bullets out of gangbangers.
- VALERIE: What's wrong with you?
- JACKSON: I've just never met someone
so incredibly well-insulated.
You volunteer for Obama is your whole Black card?
- VALERIE: Ohhh, you didn't ask me for my Black card
before you threw me on your couch.
- JACKSON: You didn't tell me
that you spread your legs prematurely
because I'm a doctor.
- VALERIE: So, thank you for dinner.
- JACKSON: I can walk you to your car...
- VALERIE: No, no, I'm good, thank you.
Actually, where's the bathroom?
- GINNY: You can't even imagine how few people in psych
were studying Asian American anything ten years ago.
There was a hole, so I decided to fill it.
You?
- BRIAN: I try to fill holes whenever I can.
- GINNY: You came to this work, why?
- BRIAN: I'm not sure.
You've had a squirrel or something trapped in a wall
or vent or something, yeah?
You know, at first it's this sort of nonlocalized smell,
just unpleasant around the edges...it's nagging...
And maybe you just need to take out the garbage
or put a lemon in the disposal.
So you do, and then you run to whatever meeting
or class you're late to.
A little later, you notice it again.
It's faint, and maybe you're imagining it.
You spray a little Febreze and go about your business.
Then one day you get home and it's just...foul, putrid...
and you know that something has died in the fucking wall.
- GINNY: It's a good metaphor.
- BRIAN: Well, I hadn't made it yet.
- GINNY: Yeah, I know, but I get it...racism.
- BRIAN: You're really going to have to stop doing that.
My point, and I'm not being altruistic.
It smells, and I live here.
In neuropsych, all I could do was point it out, like you do.
- GINNY: I don't just... I address it in my research,
with my clients.
- BRIAN: Anyway, I did five more years
because I wanted the tools to nail that shit down.
It's a lot of argument to get your head around.
Seriously, like trying to work out the space-time continuum
in a summer movie.
There's always a valid other argument.
But I've figured it out, and I'm right,
and the University's fucking with me.
- GINNY: Is it possible that you look at it all
through too narrow a lens?
- BRIAN: Explain? - GINNY: So the work I do...
Perhaps it's given more...room,
because I'm not railing against the system
that created the circumstances.
- BRIAN: By circumstances, you mean genocide,
slavery, internment?
- GINNY: Look, I've identified issues
in specific Asian populations: depression, anxiety.
I've acknowledged the unfair social dynamic--
- BRIAN: Racism.
- GINNY: Do you not get tired of that word?
I've pointed out the "dynamic" that feeds the cycle.
But I address the cycle.
What good does running around screaming slavery
and internment do now?
- BRIAN: What about the white individuals
who made the bullshit that makes the low self-esteem?
- GINNY: I'm more concerned with the female
Asian American individuals
who are just trying to get jobs, date, have decent family lives.
It is what it is.
Why not give people a better set of tools for navigating it?
- BRIAN: So who do you date, demographically?
- GINNY: I told you I don't date.
I just sleep around, but because I'm a slut.
Not because I'm Asian.
- BRIAN: Then why are we wasting time with all this chitchat?
- GINNY: Your earnestness and dogged determination
appeal to me somehow.
- BRIAN: And I like that you're a slutty accommodationist.
- JACKSON: I can make you a plate to take with you.
- VALERIE: I'm sorry, I just...I have a question.
Do guys like you come on to girls like me just to punish us?
- JACKSON: I told you, it's been a long day.
- VALERIE: Seriously, what did I do to you?
- JACKSON: So here's what I do.
I'm a surgeon.
I've been studying to be a surgeon
for the last eight years.
That's not including all of the pre-meds in college.
And I did well, straight As.
It seems I have a natural proclivity
just for about anything I do.
You know, a residency is a hazing, an endurance test.
They put us on all these crazy hours in emergency.
It's just barfing, blood, crying babies,
and boys trying to kill themselves via one another.
We're supposed to pay our dues for a couple of years
and then follow a real surgeon who's supposed to teach me.
Except they don't like me.
We don't need to waste time deconstructing
why the Black guy can't get a decent mentor in Boston--
- VALERIE: In America, it's not just Boston.
- JACKSON: Yeah, okay.
So, every now and then I don't feel like being treated
like Sambo that day, and I push back, just a little.
So today I say, "No, when I wrote that about that patient
"on that chart there that you're holding,
"it's because I knew what I was doing.
"And when that nurse came up behind me
"and called Doctor Whoever-the-fuck to come in
"and second-guess me, and he decided that I'm stucky
"and so arbitrarily prescribed
"some kind of bullshit course of action.
"And now, the patient's worse,
"and you will not pin that on me."
Argh, well, it doesn't matter how I say it.
I'm "angry" and "volatile"
and "not good at working with others,"
so I get written up
and have to do the whole fucking bedpan thing again.
So today, I went to work, to the emergency room
and I worked for ten straight hours,
then I went to my clinic and worked for another six
because someone has to take care of those people,
and then I made your ass dinner.
And you're trippin' because I tease you about hot sauce.
No, I don't have time for that.
- VALERIE: So the takeaway is, you ask a woman over
and treat her like shit because you had a bad day?
I'm really glad you cleared that up.
[dial tone]
- GINNY: Ginny, with shopping bags around her feet.
But I called earlier today.
You were holding a blouse like the one in the window.
Yang, Ginny Yang.
Blue silk, petite two.
Well, can you send someone onto the floor to check?
While she's looking, if I um, if I make a catalogue purchase
and have it shipped directly to the store,
I don't have to pay the shipping charges, correct?
[phone ringing]
Excuse me, could you just, I just have to...
Hello, Dr. Yang.
I'm sorry, this is?... Are you in crisis?
Have you hurt yourself?
Good, I will meet you at the hospital.
Listen to me, you are okay.
You have done your work, Akiko.
You have a lifetime of pain that you are just acknowledging,
and it's frightening, overwhelming...
but this is a breakthrough,
and I am very proud of you, and I am here for you.
Do you have a friend or neighbor who can drive you?
Good, good.
Go to Mass General and ask for Psych.
I'll meet you there.
Remember to breathe.
Inhale three, hold three, exhale five.
[inhales] Two, three.
Hold, two, three.
[exhales] Two, three, four, five.
I will see you soon.
So it's not there?
Then surely you can take it off the mannequin, please.
No, no, it wasn't a question.
Please, have her take it off the mannequin.
Thank you.
Worries, no worries?
Why would I worry?
I'd just like my blouse.
Thank you.
Cash. [timer dings]
- VALERIE: Hi, I'm Valerie Johnston
and I'll be reading for Shalonda.
I left my headshot with the monitor,
but if you need one, I can... Okay, then.
[clears throat]
I was lovin' you Lenny.
All that time you was lookin' at me,
an' I thought you was lookin' into my soul.
An' you wasn't seein' me at all.
An' I was lookin' at you, an' I knowed you seed somthin'.
I knowed there was a man in there,
an' I could see him, even if you couldn't.
And Mama said, she said, "Naw girl, he don' love you.
"He only love you long as you give him what he need,
"stay scaret, an' stay under 'is foot."
An' I toll, I toll...
I toll? I toll her...I toll...
Oh...okay, I told her, okay.
And I told her she was wrong and I told her.
I got it, sorry, where should I begin?
No, I can just start over.
I am so sorry, my agent didn't send the right sides,
so I'm reading this cold.
I was toll to prepare for Mary, the social worker.
Oh, I seemed a better fit for this role...
So my agent did tell you I have a call at 2:00.
I'm doing Enemy of the People at...Mm-hmm.
Sure thing, from the top.
I was lovin' you Lenny.
All that time you was lookin' at me,
an' I thought you was lookin' into my soul.
An' I-- Oh, okay, sure.
Thank you. [timer dings]
- BRIAN: Brian, before a small audience
in a small lecture hall.
I'd first like to thank the Institute for having me,
and I have the pleasure of having in the audience
two of my deans, Dean Jankowski, Dean Thompson.
I won't begin to name the rest of you;
I surely could only get into trouble that way.
But suffice it to say, it's wonderful to see so many of you
from so many disciplines... No pressure.
I will just dive in then.
Our understanding of prejudice has largely been characterized
as simple animosity born of fear and ignorance.
We have subscribed relatively narrow parameters
to the phenomenon of prejudice.
Evidence for this can be found in bipolar attitude scales,
like/dislike, that measure prejudice.
Economists, sociologists, and psychologists, we've seen this.
There was a time when I'd have attributed
your eyes rolling up into the back of your heads
as a direct correlate to my inability
to grab you and hold you.
I thought it was the words.
How the words "racism," "prejudice," "discrimination"
always send us into a collective tailspin,
a down spiral of defensiveness, embarrassment,
animosity, inadequacy, or rage.
And I get that.
I understand that.
Honestly, I almost don't resent that.
Just listen, please!
So, what are we to do?
How then to approach the explaining of that
which both defies and begs for explanation?
You, my peers and superiors from the hard sciences
would say, "Don't."
We are not here to explain, we are here to present.
God forbid anything as "subjective" as race
touch our precious findings.
So the data collective sits there, years and years
and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent gathering
and aggregating, and it sits there
while we bullshit around it.
God forbid we're the white people saying the wrong thing.
Let's face it, you're afraid that the government interests
and the big moneyed donors you're in bed with
will pull your resources.
It's unconscionable.
Tragic, really-- your silencing of truth.
This dynamic has held our country hostage
since its inception.
And you'd rather we not look at it?
Well I say, grow a pair.
Suck it the fuck up.
The level of aggressive passivity in this room,
in these vocations, in this country, is shameful.
Roll up your sleeves and wade through the muck.
We must look at the scientific data
and embrace that we, the white people, are implicated.
Look...numbers.
More numbers.
What's that?
Numbers.
Cold, hard data.
I'm speaking your language.
I've proven that it's there, in our heads,
in our cells, in our fucking blood.
A predisposition to hate.
We are programmed to distrust and fear those
with more melanin.
We aren't defective, we just must understand our brains,
and accept our physiology,
and acknowledge the social reality
that we so virulently deny.
God damn it, we are scientists,
and so bear the burden of enlightenment and reason.
Don't we?
Fine, then.
[timer ticking]
So we'll turn to the stereotype content model.
Rosen and Gardner predicts differentiated prejudices...
[bell ringing]
[clock ticking]
[bell ringing]
- BRIAN: Jackson and Brian sit on a bench.
They've just finished
an intense basketball one-on-one.
- JACKSON: Tell me again.
So why did you invite me?
- BRIAN: I told you.
Maybe we could just talk about how I kicked ass on the court.
Not once, no, not once, but twice.
See, white men can jump!
- JACKSON: Obviously I was off my game.
- BRIAN: I thought your people could use that shit,
like turn it into anger,
and burn up on the court or something.
- JACKSON: My people?
- BRIAN: You can't channel years of oppression
and beat one middle-aged white guy?
- JACKSON: I let you win.
Seriously though, your shit fucked me up.
- BRIAN: I guess I just needed a friendly face.
- JACKSON: No, you needed your colleagues
to see your Black friend
not be offended by your weird work.
- BRIAN: But that's why I didn't want to just hand you
the paper to read.
- JACKSON: So this is what all the hubbub's about?
And now they're gonna decide your fate.
- BRIAN: Pretty much.
- JACKSON: How have you been talking
around the heart of your work for all these years?
I thought you were an advocate.
You know, just acknowledging the presence of a social phenomenon,
that innocuous shit you pseudoscience people like to do.
Your numbers are straight? - BRIAN: Yeah.
- JACKSON: The lab work checks out?
- BRIAN: Of course. - JACKSON: Damn.
- BRIAN: I know. - JACKSON: I'm not surprised.
- BRIAN: I was.
- JACKSON: Of course you were, you're white.
- BRIAN: But I'm...evolved.
- JACKSON: If you're so evolved, why were you surprised?
Seriously, every time a white person acts
like you'd expect a white person to act,
well, like I expect a white person to act,
all the white people are first like,
"I don't believe it, it didn't happen,
"you must have heard it wrong."
Then, "Oh, I'm shocked," but then,
"Get over it Black people, it's not that big a deal,
"Obama's running for president,
"and you've got Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan."
- BRIAN: Come on, I've got the court reserved for another hour.
- JACKSON: [sighs] You should take a moment
to enjoy the glow of your victory,
because I'm about to beat your ass.
- BRIAN: That's the anger you were supposed to channel
into your game.
- JACKSON: So you've proven that whites have a issue with race.
- BRIAN: They do. - JACKSON: A revelation.
- BRIAN: That's not a revelation; I know that.
We have to be able to see it, right?
Someone has to say, conclusively, irrefutably,
that it's there, before things can get better.
You're a man of science.
I sort of thought that you'd celebrate my genius.
- JACKSON: You want me to celebrate your genius?
How about I just celebrate my victory
when I beat your sorry white ass.
You coming?
I thought we were playing.
- BRIAN: I can't believe you really have a problem with...
- JACKSON: Let's drop it.
- BRIAN: Just answer me. - JACKSON: What?
- BRIAN: Do you have a problem with my work?
- JaCKSON: That's just stupid.
How I'm gon' have a problem with your work?
- BRIAN: With the study.
- JACKSON: Come on man, naw, it's cool,
we still aw-ight... It's all cool.
- BRIAN: Okay, what is this?
- JACKSON: You gotta let this shit go, man.
We cool, let's leave it.
- BRIAN: What is this, "We cool?"
Who did you just turn into?
Just say what's on your mind, please.
- JACKSON: It's just the preliminary study, right?
- BRIAN: Yeah, the hard conclusions aren't in yet.
- JACKSON: And your whole thing is,
you're gonna prove to the white people that they're racist.
- BRIAN: I don't say racist-- - JACKSON: Sure you do.
- BRIAN: On the radio, and, you know,
- JACKSON: Also a problem. - BRIAN: But it's there, so--
- JACKSON: But you're saying... - BRIAN: Yeah, okay.
- JACKSON: So the lead on like the Today Show will say,
"Harvard study proves whites are biologically racist."
I don't know, man, that's a dangerous sound bite.
I'm not even sure it's relevant.
- BRIAN: Sure it is.
Legislation is made on statistics and scientific proof.
- JACKSON: You know who was also into the mixing of race,
biology, and legislation?
The Nazis.
- BRIAN: You're calling me Mengele?
- JACKSON: Of course not, but I got your attention.
- BRIAN: This is the time.
Politically we're poised...
- JACKSON: If he wins.
And he couldn't possibly, it's America.
They did those studies, right?
The Clark study, the one they used to push for integration,
the little white and Black dolls.
They showed the little Black girls
and the little white girls the white doll, right?
And then they showed them the Black doll
and they asked them which one was prettier,
and they all said the little white doll, right?
- BRIAN: That's psychologists and sociologists.
I'm exposing it at an indisputable
neurological level so that--
JACKSON: All I'm saying is-- - BRIAN: I'm talking here--
- JACKSON: I'm listening. - BRIAN: No, you're not--
- JACKSON: I'm just saying--
- BRIAN: Shut up and let me finish, Jesus.
Until they see it: the brain scans, the blood work,
the proof, there's room to think the worst.
What would the worst be?
- JACKSON: I'm not following you.
- BRIAN: So back to the Clark study.
Our conclusion, right, our liberal-minded conclusion is,
the children are repulsed by the Black dolls
because of societal messages,
right, cultural validation of a certain beauty standard.
For the Black girls it's supposed to be
internalized oppression, right?
But now, just pretend that
you're not well-intentioned and liberal, okay?
What else might the conclusion suggest?
That the Black doll is ugly.
I'm just showing what's already in the brain.
- JACKSON: The study doesn't stand up, and I'm a real doctor,
who makes people well and... - BRIAN: That's low.
- JACKSON: Almost a brain surgeon...
- BRIAN: Almost...
- JACKSON: So, with all my "edumacation,"
I'm not getting how just because you see a grown brain react
in a certain way, or someone sweats, or blinks,
or their blood level is slightly more oxygenated,
how you surmise that that's cellular?
Why wouldn't that just prove how early
and effectively a racist society imprints?
- BRIAN: That's true, if the majority of white Americans
didn't swear that they haven't a racist thought in their heads.
That's the lie.
- JACKSON: "White Americans."
You're only looking at the white Americans
who shop at Whole Foods,
worry about their ecological footprints,
and teach their babies sign language.
- BRIAN: Blue blood or working class,
all the same brain patterns.
All I'm trying to do is prove that it's there.
It's what white supremacy is predicated upon.
I'm saying even the most well-minded,
liberal people thinks,
white people, thinks, subconsciously, deep down,
past where we've been programmed not to say it,
truly feels that the Black doll actually is not only ugly,
but wants to kill our children.
- JACKSON: It's not enough. - BRIAN: It's my part.
- JACKSON: Is it your part, or your ticket to tenure?
Isn't what makes us human supposed to be our ability
to subvert our impulses, our genetically-driven impulses?
So we don't walk around fucking all the attractive women?
- BRIAN: You do...
- JACKSON: Well, shouldn't this study,
on which you've based your professional reputation,
be about more than just that?
And where's the part about what Black people see?
Did it not occur to you that
we might have less than ambivalent feelings
when presented with scary pictures of white people?
- BRIAN: I wanted to work on that.
- JACKSON: You wanted to? - BRIAN: That's next.
I use Blacks mostly for control groups now.
Phase 2 is flipping it.
You think this is a powder keg? - JACKSON: That's bullshit.
You better get on phase 2.
Such a trailblazer, then figure that shit out,
then get back to me about the DNA of racist white people.
- BRIAN: You're really bothered by this.
- JACKSON: Yeah, yeah.
- BRIAN: Well, so is everyone.
Did you really let me win?
Both games?
- JACKSON: Look at me.
What do you think? [bell chimes]
- VALERIE: Inside Jackson's clinic, day.
Valerie stands at the front desk.
She waits for a receptionist.
- GINNY: Ginny bursts in, obviously in a hurry,
expecting to do another Jackson study drive-by.
- GINNY: So, is Dr. Moore here?
- VALERIE: I, I don't know, I just got...
I don't think anyone's--
- GINNY: I brought these papers for him.
- VALERIE: Oh, I'm not an employee here...
- GINNY: We spoke on the phone. - VALERIE: No.
- GINNY: Maybe you could put in a good word for me?
Get him to just look at it.
- VALERIE: I'm sorry, I don't think it's open.
The door was unlocked,
but I don't see any doctors or any patients...
- GINNY: Oh, so he's told you about me.
I'm really not the pain in the ass
I'm sure he'd have you think, Nicole-- Nikki.
- VALERIE: Valerie. - GINNY: No, Ginny.
Well, thank you, Nikki.
If you could just give him that...
- VALERIE: Hello?
Valerie is about to exit when Jackson comes in from the back
with lunch in a greasy bag,
something unhealthy from the neighborhood.
- JACKSON: It was open? - VALERIE: I guess so.
- JACKSON: I just ran to get my lunch.
- VALERIE: There was someone here for you,
short, Asian woman?
- JACKSON: That's every other person in this neighborhood.
VALERIE: I've been thinking about something you said
the other night, about helping our people, or something.
And at first I was like, "Who the fuck does he think he is?"
And then I was like, "Who the fuck does he think he is,
"but , what do I do to further whatever?"
And then I was like "Fuck you" to make me justify myself
for being an artist.
I really kind of liked you.
I did.
It's not very often you meet someone, anyone,
who's smart and funny and quick.
I like quick, and you push back a little,
which is nice, to a point.
And I really liked that you're Black
and handsome and "articulate."
- JACKSON: You like that I'm Black and articulate ?
- VALERIE: There were quotes around "articulate."
I'm a "good girl."
I'm the girl who went to church,
and kept my virginity until junior year college,
and felt bad about it after.
I'm the girl that pretty much anything I say
or do is just because I'm earnest and honest,
and I was never the girl who knows what not to say
and how to act disinterested enough to get the guys like you.
I'm not slick, and I say the wrong things.
- JACKSON: You couldn't just call?
- VALERIE: Okay, then.
- JACKSON: Jackson picks up the study Ginny has left
and exits with it as the lights fade out.
[timer dings]
- GINNY: Ginny, in session.
In English please, Akiko.
Would you like a tissue? Okay.
That must be very difficult for you.
You've never had your marginalization named?
Marginalized, made to feel small.
Made to feel outside.
Oh, you've never been marginalized?
Because you consider yourself white.
I didn't...okay, well, certainly identity is subjective.
I'm not sure that what I think matters.
Is it important to you that I agree?
No, no, I wonder only why you might have chosen me?
Do you think of me as white?
Identity is tricky.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
It sounds like you just want respect.
And what would that look like?
- VALERIE: Lights up on Valerie sitting on the floor
in Brian's lab.
She sorts and stacks 5 x 7 cards.
She makes stacks of different categories on the floor,
placing each card in its own pile as she sorts.
- BRIAN: Brian works on the computer.
[clock ticking]
- VALERIE: White, white, white, white, white, Asian,
white, African American, white, white, white.
- BRIAN: Do you have to do it out loud?
- VALERIE: White, white, white, white...
- GINNY: So it's complicated.
We've talked about this before, Akiko.
Yes, I strongly identify as Asian American.
But that is my choice.
No, no, I wonder only why you might have chosen me though?
- VALERIE: White, white, white, African American, other.
white, other, Latino, African American,
African American, other.
Who's other if you don't use Asians?
- BRIAN: Native American, biracial, African-Caribbean,
Middle Eastern...some Jews don't like to mark white.
- VALERIE: Seems like you'd rather be "something"
than "other."
- GINNY: I see, you think of me as white.
Identity is tricky.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, it's complicated.
So yes, again, I strongly identify as Asian American.
But that is my choice.
It's not necessary that we identify similarly.
We're set for the same time next week, right?
Great, consider my question though.
What would make you feel "seen"?
- VALERIE: Don't you have grad students who could do this?
- BRIAN: No.
Val, it is not economically efficient for me
to pay you to not let me work. - VALERIE: Sorry.
You said you would canvass with me this weekend.
- BRIAN: Yeah, I got buried here.
- VALERIE: Well, you can imagine
how much fun New Hampshire was for me.
Do you even want him to win?
- BRIAN: Do they brainwash you guys
down there at headquarters?
- VALERIE: It won't happen without everyone doing their--
BRIAN: Valerie, it won't happen.
- VALERIE: Then I don't know why you're doing this work.
- BRIAN: I'm not, because you won't stop talking.
[clock ticking]
- VALERIE: White, white, white, white, white,
white, other, white.
Do you keep track of the race of the person surveying?
- BRIAN: Why?
- VALERIE: Obviously, this stack belongs to a white person.
- BRIAN: Valerie, why are you fucking with me today?
- VALERIE: I read your study. - BRIAN: You too?
- VALERIE: It scared me... Can I tell you why?
- BRIAN: Yeah, sure, I'm happy for you to have an opinion
about that which you know nothing.
It's great that you feel empowered to weigh in
on this work I've been doing for decades
because your skin is brown.
I get it all the time.
Did you know Blacks at the med school
coalesced with Blacks in Af-Am and Anthropology
to petition me to stop my work?
- VALERIE: Why?
- BRIAN: Because "the mingling of science and race
"could prove damaging."
You're here now because when my department got pushback,
I lost my funding and they pulled my research assistants.
They're shaming me into leaving.
- VALERIE: You think it's hard studying Black?
Try being Black. - BRIAN: Of course, I get that.
I'm just tired of having to say "I get that" all the time.
Brian crosses to Valerie and sits next to her.
Listen Val, I'm just a white guy who wanted to know
what it meant, in my brain, to be a white guy.
I just wanted to compare
what your crazy public minister people
are always screaming about
with what's actually happening in my head.
And when I started to look into the heads of people
who look like me, even I was shocked.
So then I wanted to know what people who looked like you saw
when they see the things that I see.
And that we see two different worlds is blowin' my mind.
And I'm wrong to want to explore that?
It's E equals MC squared.
It's Darwin, and Galileo, and Newton, and Copernicus.
And what do I get?
Shut down by someone like you?
What the hell do Black anthropologists
and economists know about science?
What do you know about science?
Life is so hard for you, why?
You're beautiful.
You clean houses 'cause you think it's cute
and pisses off your mother.
And you're gonna criticize me for wanting to make tangible
that which your people are accused of making up?
- VALERIE: It's more complicated.
- BRIAN: I'm sure it is. - VALERIE: It's complicated.
Valerie reaches out and touches Brian's face.
It startles them both.
- BRIAN: He covers her hand with his.
The moment is almost more...
- VALERIE: Then, a mutual agreement to let it pass.
- BRIAN: Light fades, and Valerie continues sorting,
as Brian returns to the glow of his computer.
- VALERIE: White, white, white, white, other,
white, white, white... Hey, Brian?
- BRIAN: What?
- VALERIE: I do believe I heard you call me pretty.
- BRIAN: I said beautiful.
[phone rings]
- GINNY: Ginny rushes up
as Jackson is pulling the curtain closed
on an emergency room.
Ginny almost bumps into him, not seeing him.
I'm sorry, I'm looking for a patient, um,
Hayashida, Akiko Hayashida. - JACKSON: A patient?
- GINNY: The front desk told me...oh, it's you.
- JACKSON: You have patients? Here?
- GINNY: We met at your clinic. Ginny Yang.
- JACKSON: Yeah, I have a very good memory.
But you have patients, here?
- GINNY: I try not to.
I got a call from Psych that a client of mine...
- JACKSON: You're a doctor.
- GINNY: If you'd read my study, the proposal...
You know what, I just need to find Akiko.
- JACKSON: They took her up to Psych.
It'll take them a while to check her in.
She's fine, superficial wounds.
She wanted attention. - GINNY: Well, she got it.
This is her second time here. - JACKSON: Wait, please.
I did read your study.
You wouldn't give up.
- GINNY: Then you know I'm a real doctor.
- JACKSON: Well, I really, I didn't realize
you were going to provide free counseling.
- GINNY: You didn't give me a chance to tell you.
- JACKSON: I was busy saving lives.
Who's doing the head shrinking? - GINNY: Counseling.
It matters why?
- JACKSON: I don't want a bunch of 24-year-old white girls
brushing up their psychiatric doctoring skills on my patients.
- GINNY: I'll do it. - JACKSON: Okay, then.
- GINNY: You're welcome.
- JACKSON: You're welcome. - GINNY: Okay, then.
- VALERIE: Valerie wears an Obama hat, jacket, and T-shirt.
She holds a clipboard and a stack of brochures.
She stands in a very tight, square light.
She is waiting for someone to answer the door.
Good afternoon, my name is Valerie Johnston
and I-- [door slams]
Hello, My name is Valerie Johnston
and I wondered if you are registered to vote,
and I wanted to tell you a bit about my candidate,
Barack Obama. [door slams]
I wondered if you're registered to vote.
My candidate, Barack Obama... [door slams]
Hi, I'm Valerie Johnston.
Yes, Obama, thank you.
You have no idea how mean people can be.
Right, well, you know, change doesn't happen
unless we all...I'm sorry?
I'm sure Hillary could be a fine leader.
But...well, I...she's not my candidate.
Yes, I am a feminist, but she's not my candidate.
The first woman president would be incredible,
as would the first Black...
So I'm guessing you don't need brochures.
Well, it's really not about gender or race.
He's the best candidate.
Yes, I am deeply aware of gender disparity.
But some of us have... You know what?
Why don't you do us both a favor
and just slam your door in my... [door slams]
- GINNY: Ginny sits at the edge of the bed, barefoot,
buttoning up her blouse.
- BRIAN: Brian has entered in pajama bottoms
with a glass of water for Ginny.
- GINNY: I bought out of all my classes for the fall...
- BRIAN: You're beautiful.
- GINNY: But this spring I'm teaching one,
which will kill me.
I'll never make my deadlines.
I've got two book deadlines, a journal review,
and I'm supposed to be presenting at A-Psy next month.
- BRIAN: I just want to point out that this,
this is really sexy.
This post-coital banter of yours.
- GINNY: I'm sorry, it was really nice.
You should know about me that I've been criticized
for being unnurturing. - BRIAN: Are you?
- GINNY: Nurturing is for babies and plants.
- BRIAN: That's hot.
He kisses her, eases her back down onto the bed.
It seems that the shirt might be coming off.
- GINNY: I've really gotta go or I won't be any good tomorrow.
- BRIAN: Argh, okay.
You're the youngest tenured person in the universe,
why can't you just stay with your boyfriend for a night?
- GINNY: I work harder because I have tenure.
Boyfriend, really, already?
Okay, sure, I guess.
Seriously, tenure just turned up the pressure.
- BRIAN: Why? - GINNY: I don't know.
I have to prove that I deserve it.
- BRIAN: Prove?
- GINNY: What do you want me to say?
- BRIAN: I guess I thought maybe you'd say
you work so hard for the girls...
- GINNY: What girls?
- BRIAN: The girls you study, the girls you counsel.
- GINNY: I counsel women.
- BRIAN: I'm just saying, all the hoops you jumped through,
and you have it, you have everything; why keep jumping?
Just be still in the success for a second.
- GINNY: Sit still?
- BRIAN: I'm just trying to give perspective.
Why don't you stay over? - GINNY: I don't do that.
- BRIAN: I won't give you a key.
You can take your toothbrush with you.
I just thought maybe we could, you know,
talk some sexy data analysis, go another round, and then spoon?
- GINNY: I don't spoon.
I don't even use that word. - BRIAN: Why are you here?
- GINNY: You're the first man I've met lately
who doesn't seem deeply infected with yellow fever,
you're attractive, seem to be passionate
about doing good in the world,
and you're the smartest person I know who isn't me.
But I really do have to go. - BRIAN: No, you cannot go.
It's 11:45.
If you do not go home and work, the world will not end.
- GINNY: I just gave you great sex, decent conversation.
You're such a leech.
- BRIAN: I gave you great sex. - GINNY: I concede that.
- BRIAN: What is this thing that you do?
- GINNY: I'm going. - BRIAN: Just talk to me.
Don't go home and order a new pair of shoes.
[Ginny gasps] Yeah, I see you.
That's an abnormal amount of shopping that you do.
That, my dear, is a problem.
- GINNY: We're talking about my shopping habits
because I wouldn't stay and spoon?
- BRIAN: We're talking about your shopping habits
because I think that you think you're perfect.
And you're not.
- GINNY: You're jealous. - BRIAN: I'm horny.
- GINNY: I have to go, I have work to do.
- BRIAN: I'm sorry, that was uncalled for.
I just...it would be nice to make enough money
to one day support your shopping addiction.
Forgive me for sounding like a Neanderthal.
My mother was a feminist, she raised me better than this,
but listen, I want to take care of you a little bit.
I want for you to know that I've got you.
Stop proving and just lean into me for a second.
Relax into me. - GINNY: Relax?
Relax into you, are you kidding me?
I have to show up and represent.
Do you know how many people are lined up behind me
to take that shit away?
You're supposed to know,
but you don't because it's...untenable.
- BRIAN: I've always understood that.
How would you not know that I've always understood that?
It's what my career is built on.
It's what I do; you know that!
- GINNY: So what, you want an award?
- BRIAN: Yes, why should I not want an award?
That's good business.
That's access to people and money, that's influence.
That's legislation.
Yeah, I want a Balzan and a Templeton,
and yes, I want a Genius Grant too.
- GINNY: It's not even called that anymore.
- BRIAN: I want a Genius Grant.
- GINNY: A Genius Grant will not make your dick longer.
I don't know why I said that.
I like your dick, your dick is long enough.
- BRIAN: I want a Genius Grant.
- GINNY: I don't think you do.
People around you get weird, hostile sometimes almost.
My mother actually said to me, "Oh, she's such a genius,
"but she can't find a man and give me grandchildren."
I went out with this guy who after sex turned to me and said,
"So, that's what a power fuck feels like."
I was doing my work, for the girls as you say,
and the more the white men said "Good job,"
the further away I got from what I thought I was doing.
Praise is insidious and seductive, and I hate it.
So you don't talk to me about what you don't know.
Just sit there in the want of it.
But shut up about what you don't have.
- BRIAN: You love it, you love the power.
- GINNY: What's wrong with you?
- BRIAN: I'm just saying, who does a person have to fuck
to get a Genius Grant around here?
- GINNY: Ginny goes to slap him, but then she catches herself.
Okay, okay.
I likee white man longa longa penis.
It very, how do you say, it very very please me.
Ginny pushes Brian onto the bed, kneels in front of him.
It's disturbing; it should be.
She has unzipped his pants.
It takes him a moment to realize what's happening.
- BRIAN: What? Stop...
- GINNY: Why you no hard?
I not please? - BRIAN: Ginny...
- GINNY: I make white man feel good
and feel good and feel good.
- BRIAN: Ginny, back to audience,
begins to fellate him.
- GINNY: So you tell Ginny if I no please.
- BRIAN: In darkness, we hear Brian enjoying it,
despite himself.
[clock ticking]
[timer dings]
- JACKSON: Night.
Jackson stands next to a back alley stage door.
Valerie enters.
Truly magnificent.
- VALERIE: I wouldn't have expected you to come.
- JACKSON: Well, you sent me an e-mail.
- VALERIE: I sent everyone in my address book an e-mail.
- JACKSON: You're luminous.
- VALERIE: I don't understand you.
- JACKSON: Really, I liked the play, a lot.
But every time you walked out there,
whew, the whole stage lit up.
- VALERIE: Thank you.
- JAKCSON: I'm sorry I didn't see you in Julius Caesar.
- VALERIE: It was nice of you to come.
- JACKSON: I'm sure you have people to get to?
- VALERIE: No, my people came opening night.
- JACKSON: Look, I'm sorry about...
- VALERIE: Oh, no no no, not necessary.
I actually had a moment when I thought
I might owe you an apology.
That's why I stopped by the... It passed.
You stir me up.
- JACKSON: Can I take you to get a drink or something?
- VALERIE: No.
- JACKSON: It's an interesting play.
- VALERIE: I know, right?
- JACKSON: And nobody's mama was on crack. [laughs]
- VALERIE: Nope, no crack in Ibsen.
- JACKSON: Can we try this again, maybe dinner?
- VALERIE: I told my girlfriends about you. [sighs]
There's some debate as to whether you're a sociopath
or just a horrible person.
- JACKSON: Okay then, good luck with your life.
- VALERIE: I really do appreciate that you came.
[phone chimes]
- BRIAN: Brian sits alone in a restaurant.
[background chatter]
- GINNY: A dissertation defense ran late, I should have called.
- BRIAN: Yes.
- GINNY: I'm sure you thought I wasn't--
- BRIAN: Yes.
- GINNY: I should have called you back.
How was your week?
- BRIAN: Two weeks, Ginny.
I've had better.
Yours? - GINNY: Busy.
- BRIAN: Of course.
- GINNY: When we first met, you joked about the prevalence
of my people in the sciences. - BRIAN: We joked.
You just said, " You joked," you laughed too, that's we ...
- GINNY: They don't give us tenure, Brian.
Asian American women, our tenure rate
is seriously something like none to every 20 white guys.
Brian, I don't do self-reflective, you know that.
- BRIAN: I've yet to meet a psychologist who does.
- GINNY: So I have this client, this girl at the clinic.
She came in today.
Couldn't be more than 17.
And she's so smart, just really, could have the world.
She's not particularly pretty, but Asian goes a long way.
Ooh, I just heard myself say that.
You know what she does?
She comes home from school and does her homework
and then she does the books and schedules
for her family's business.
She's up 'til 2:00 a.m. every night.
And she's not going to get out, Brian.
None of these "Harvard Asians" are from her world.
Our world... Most of us never get out.
She'll work those books,
and her brother will inherit the business,
and she'll marry and have kids,
and they won't get out of Chinatown either.
She says, "I don't really have problems,
"but you give me a Barnes & Noble gift card
"if I come for six weeks, right?"
And we sit and stare at one another, and sometimes,
just because she feels sorry for me,
she tells me about a test she's nervous about or something.
And today I gave her a big stack of $20 gift cards
and suggested she exfoliate her forehead every now and then
and to always use condoms, and I gave her my blessing.
I shouldn't have run away, huh.
I don't do girlfriend well.
I've never actually done girlfriend.
- BRIAN: That's fine.
But I do want you to know that I was properly chastised.
Your punishment was diabolically effective.
I tortured myself.
I looked good and hard and long
at the white male patriarchal asshole you'd proven me to be.
I had the existential crisis you'd hoped for.
But then you know what?
I realized that I got off.
What did you get out of it?
- GINNY: The satisfaction of a job well done?
- BRIAN: We'll never be close enough for that to be funny.
I'm sorry. - GINNY: Okay.
- BRIAN: Ginny, you don't say "I'm sorry."
That's not unnurturing, that's just not nice.
- GINNY: I'm sorry. - BRIAN: Thank you.
- GINNY: Can be okay with it
that I'm better at everything than you?
- BRIAN: Can you try to be nice? - GINNY: Yes.
- BRIAN: Then I will endeavor to.
Can we please go home and make-up spoon?
[timer dings]
- JACKSON: Meanwhile, at the hospital.
Yes, sir, but I'm doing twice the rounds.
Yes, I understand that.
There's a file folder, right there,
behind the nurses' station,
that says, "resident rescheduling requests."
Yes, and I filled it out fully expecting
that a superior would say yes or no.
And you're getting on me just for filling it out?
I've never asked for--
I have never missed a day, I've never been late,
I just needed to pick my brother up from...
All you had to do was say yes or no.
But you're reprimanding me for asking?
I don't know what this is.
You want to break me.
You want me to lose my mind
trying to rationalize why you might want me broken.
You are pathologically committed to seeing me fail.
But not just fail; you want my soul dead.
You want to kill my soul.
But I get it now.
I can't heal people when my soul is broken.
My soul must be intact for me to do my work.
Please feel free to tell yourself
and your colleagues that you have won,
if that's what you needed to do.
Because I'm out.
[timer dings]
- BRIAN: It's 2008.
Brian, Jackson, and Ginny are mid-meal.
There's an untouched place setting.
A long time passes
as the men on either side of Ginny watch her text.
[phone chiming]
- GINNY: I'm sorry, guys.
I just have one thing... I didn't send,
I think I composed, but didn't...
- BRIAN: What if you didn't hit send?
Would, would the world end, do you think?
- GINNY: Shit, okay, here we go...
There it is, okay.
Okay, I'm sorry.
- JACKSON: No hide off my back.
This is great.
- GINNY: Brian did the chicken.
- JACKSON: It's good. - BRIAN: Thank you.
Well, next time we invite you over,
maybe Ginny will actually put her phone down for five minutes.
- GINNY: I'm totally present.
Jackson, did I offend you? - JACKSON: No.
It's bad manners, but I'm not offended.
[phone rings]
- BRIAN: Look at what just happened.
It rang, I didn't answer.
It stopped ringing and we're all okay.
- GINNY: Are you sure you gave your girl Friday the right time?
- BRIAN: Yes.
Shit, that would have been her.
[phone rings] - GINNY: Oh, it's...
Hey, so you got the waivers?
That's great!
Listen, I'm gonna need to call you back.
[knocking] BRIAN: Good, here she is, I'll--
- JACKSON: She's late; I already don't like her.
- GINNY: You don't have to like her.
I don't think it's a setup.
- JACKSON: Of course it was.
- GINNY: Well, I don't even know her.
But I really don't think it was a setup.
I get the impression you're doing okay for yourself.
- VALERIE: Valerie enters, followed by Brian;
she walks straight to Ginny without seeing Jackson .
I am so sorry I'm late.
- GINNY: It's nice to meet you. - VALERIE: Likewise.
- GINNY: She's pretty. - VALERIE: She's pretty.
- GINNY: Nikki... - VALERIE: Oh my God, really?
Really? - BRIAN: What?
So, Jackson, Valerie, Valerie, Jackson, Valerie, Ginny.
- GINNY: Valerie? - JACKSON: Valerie Johnston.
- BRIAN: You two have met?
- JACKSON: On several occasions.
- VALERIE: So you orchestrated this?
- JACKSON: Don't flatter yourself.
I have no idea.
- BRIAN: That's "Angry Girl" Valerie?
Oh, ohhh. - VALERIE: Seriously?
It's like that fucking Kevin Bacon game.
- GINNY: What?
- VALERIE: Oh God, I do have manners.
Here, I brought this. - GINNY: Thank you.
I don't know what the Kevin Bacon game is,
and I don't understand how your name isn't Nikki.
We met at Jackson's clinic, right?
- VALERIE: Oh, uh, right.
Well, it's good to see you again.
Brian, your house is beautiful.
I'm so sorry I'm late.
I had a rehearsal in New York, then I couldn't get a cab
and so of course I missed my train...
- BRIAN: Wait, you're in a show in New York?
And you didn't tell me?
- VALERIE: Schenectady. - BRIAN: Schenectady?
- VALERIE: I can put New York on my résumé.
- BRIAN: Wouldn't people in the real New York know?
- VALERIE: Do I try to tell you about racist brains?
- GINNY: She has a point.
- BRIAN: Well, but, she does, you do, all the time.
- JACKSON: So, how you doin', man?
- VALERIE: Oh yeah, how are you holding up, Brian?
Really. - BRIAN: You saw me yesterday.
People, no one died.
Why don't you guys sit down?
Here, Val, let me heat up a plate for you.
Wine? - VALERIE: Red.
Do you have a nice Malbec?
[Jackson scoffs]
- JACKSON: Really man, how you doin'?
- JACKSON: I'm fine, I'm fine.
- VALERIE: How is he doing?
- JACKSON: Is he okay? - GINNY: Well, it sucks.
- VALERIE: He just told me to show up for a pity party.
I assumed it was a setup.
What happened?
- JACKSON: I just saw him a few days ago.
He didn't say anything.
- GINNY: He's not been talking about it.
A couple of weeks ago, the dean summoned him.
He thought he was gonna get his usual slap on the wrist
for something he said somewhere.
They do that, he and the dean, it's part of their dynamic.
But instead he gets "the talk."
- BRIAN: Oh good, you're providing context
for the evening's festivities.
- VALERIE: Thanks.
- BRIAN: Ginny thinks I'm depressed.
- GINNY: I didn't say that.
I just thought you could use a little cheering up.
- VALERIE: It would be okay to be depressed.
- BRIAN: I'm not depressed, I'm pissed off.
- VALERIE: Anger is the flip side of depression.
My therapist told me that.
- JACKSON: You have a therapist? Okay.
- BRIAN: Yeah, so the dean calls me in,
and there's this guy I haven't met before,
and he's introduced to me.
I don't remember what his name is; it doesn't matter.
He's their legal counsel.
And I should've known then, but I didn't know...
- VALERIE: He fired you?
They do that, they just fire you?
- GINNY: In academia it's more like,
"We should talk about your prospects here,"
and they deny you tenure and don't renew your contract.
Your colleagues are actually legally bound
not to talk to you about it to avoid litigation,
so no one says anything, not even good morning.
You're shunned.
- BRIAN: This time last year I'm sitting in the dean's office
and he's telling me that he's never seen anyone
for whom the tenure process would just be perfunctory.
- JACKSON: Like, you was in like Flynn, man.
- VALERIE: In like Flynn?
- GINNY: He really was their golden boy.
- BRIAN: It turned on a dime. - VALERIE: When?
- BRIAN: When they knew I was right.
What did they think, that I was a hobbyist?
They loved it when I went rogue.
I'd be like, "Harvard's racist,"
and they'd be like, "Oh, say it some more, baby,"
and I'd be like, "Harvard is entrenched
"in historical racism," and they'd be like,
"Oh yeah, now hit it from the back."
- VALERIE: So, Ginny, Brian tells me
you study Chinese people?
- JACKSON: Yeah, she's exploiting the poor girls
at my clinic.
- VALERIE: Wait, you and Jackson work together?
So Kevin Bacon.
- BRIAN: She's doing a study with some girls there.
- GINNY: Women.
They're Chinese, they're short.
They get confused.
I'm sorry, can we back up?
There's a game about Kevin Bacon?
- VALERIE: Theater game... - JACKSON: Or drinking game.
- VALERIE: Six degrees of separation...
- BRIAN: Premise being, every actor is six roles away
from a movie with Kevin Bacon in it.
- GINNY: Why?
- BRIAN: Because in the small spaces
between inevitable disappointment and despair,
humans have to occupy themselves with something.
Why not Kevin Bacon?
- JACKSON: Listen Brian, I've been thinking about it.
You're an amazing scholar.
- BRIAN: Are we doing this?
Please don't. - JACKSON: No, no, no smoke.
I know I give you shit, but really, I'm proud of you, man.
- VALERIE: Hey Brian, look over here.
I'm gonna distract him.
Look over here, Brian, see,
I'm going to jolt you out of your funk, ready?
- BRIAN: Yes, Val, I'm ready.
- VALERIE: Admit that this was a setup.
You were so totally setting us up.
- JACKSON: Yep, I called that too.
- VALERIE: Right?
White people are always setting me up
with their only other Black friend.
- BRIAN: You're not my only Black friend, Jackson.
He's not, he's my only friend.
- VALERIE: I'm your friend. - JACKSON: Aww.
- VALERIE: It's kind of sweet.
Did you think maybe he'd be the guy I'd spend my life with
because he has melanin too?
- BRIAN: Hey Valerie, look over here.
Why don't you have any Black friends?
- GINNY: Brian... - BRIAN: What?
She doesn't, do you?
- VALERIE: Not really.
I want to; I try.
- GINNY: Well, now you have Jackson.
- VALERIE: Yeah, no.
But I do try to only date Black men.
- GINNY: Why? - VALERIE: Because they're hot.
- GINNY: Yeah. - BRIAN: I can hear you.
- VALERIE: I'm sorry Brian, was that emasculating?
Did I emasculate him?
- GINNY: Jackson, I hope
we didn't make you feel objectified.
- JACKSON: It's cool.
But Brian, I just want you to know, we're here for you, man.
What do you need from us?
- BRIAN: I'll get another gig.
Of course I'll get another gig.
Stanford will take me in a second.
And I can be that liberal white guy
bumping my head against the conservative agenda,
feeling really good about myself and misunderstood
and nothing will change.
- VALERIE: You know it's what you study.
- GINNY: She's right.
They hate you for what you study.
You tell a bunch of liberal-minded, kindhearted,
soft intellectuals that they're racist.
- VALERIE: By nature, it's fucked up.
- JACKSON: Let me paint a picture.
So you're this white guy on the selection committee
of some big grant or fellowship.
- BRIAN: Let's make it the MacArthur.
That's the Genius Grant.
- JACKSON: So, you're white, on the decision-making committee.
It's morning, you've just poured the coffee into the travel mug,
you've said good-bye, maybe to your Black wife
or Latino husband, or your Asian lover,
or you've kissed your adopted little Senegalese baby
on the cheek, and you come to the meeting
with all of your colleagues, half of whom reached 45
and decided to become parents
to have cute little babies who look like Ginny.
- VALERIE: That's racist. - GINNY: But true.
- JACKSON: They love those babies.
More than they knew they could love anything, right?
So there you are,
Mr. Down-with-the-environment,
up-with-diversity, I'm-a-good-guy guy.
You open a folder, and the study you're supposed to consider
giving an award to says that your brain, your chemistry,
registers Black as repulsive.
And you're gonna give that an award?
- GINNY: I told him that.
- VALERIE: You know what it is?
It's like you've been turned into a Black man, right?
It's like they're treating him like he's Black.
- JACKSON: Here he is, charismatic,
intelligent, articulate...
- VALERIE: You are very articulate.
I told him that; I told you that.
- JACKSON: Pretty soon you won't even be able to get a cab.
- VALERIE: Like a Black man.
And you start to think, maybe it's me?
That's why you're so upset.
You're thinking, maybe they're right.
Maybe I've wasted all of this time.
And you're starting to feel a little crazy, right?
- JACKSON: You're feeling like, I played by the rules,
I played it better, my ideas are valid, I'm articulate,
I'm attractive, so why does no one hear me?
They're treating you like a nigger.
- BRIAN: They're supposed to hear me.
- GINNY: Why?
- BRIAN: You don't understand.
They're supposed to hear me.
- VALERIE: Why? - BRIAN: Because.
- VALERIE: Because?
- JACKSON: I know what he's going to say.
- BRIAN: Because I am the white guy.
- JACKSON: And there it is.
So I realize you're a little down,
so you know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna choose to believe that you didn't just say,
"Because I'm the white guy."
Yeah, I'm gonna believe that because you're "evolved,"
you didn't just have some sort of existential white boy crisis
because your white privilege didn't work out that day.
- BRIAN: Shut up! - VALERIE: Brian.
- JACKSON: Shut up?
You just said shut up to me?
Dude, I had shit I could be doing.
I'm just here to make you feel better.
- GINNY: Everyone's here to support you.
Don't do this, Brian.
- VALERIE: See, we should have just called this
an election party.
You can't celebrate a termination.
- BRIAN: My thought too.
- GINNY: I was trying to be nurturing.
- BRIAN: See, about, about these things,
you all will always trump me.
And it's fine, I can take it, 'cause I'm the guy who gets it.
But just, just be me for a second.
And pretend that you did grow up around people of color.
That there has never been some big mystique
or a great deal of white guilt, just enough proximity to see it.
And an early desire to fix it, this shit that we live in.
So I devote my life to trying to work that shit out.
And I do.
Wait, let's just give me the benefit of the doubt.
Since none of you actually do data analysis
or make stereotype content models,
or can read brain scans--
- JACKSON: Well, I can.
- BRIAN: My point, I've proven it.
I set out with a hypothesis, I followed protocols,
and I fucking proved something monumental.
So what I meant when I said, "I'm the white guy,"
is that I'm the white guy at Harvard.
Who do people listen to?
Whose press releases get read and written about
in the New York Times ?
Who's the first person they call
when something vaguely smelling of whatever happens?
The white guy from Harvard.
The white guy from Harvard has an inherited platform.
And I've got the numbers and I'm right, and everyone knows it.
And I get it from them all: Shut up.
You're threatening our inheritance,
our carefully constructed world of entitlement.
We have the power to silence you
because your shit blows it all up in our faces.
And God forbid white liberals are forced to look
long and hard at themselves.
God forbid that they see it.
- JACKSON: But you know it's a mindfuck.
- BRIAN: But the mindfuck isn't the racism.
The mindfuck is how dexterous my people are
at seeing it selectively.
If I'm a redneck, I don't hate you because I'm racist,
I hate you because you took my jobs and my status.
If I'm a white liberal, I don't hate you.
I sort of pity you, but I don't hate you.
I just don't really want you to live in my neighborhood.
In fact, I want to move into yours and make you move out
so I can build a Trader Joe's.
I am so not racist that I'll let a handful
of the best of your children got to my child's school.
I'm not racist; I don't notice everyone at my job is white.
In fact, I'm so not racist
that I've been virulently critiquing that for years.
I'm so, so, so, so not racist.
Just please don't fuck my daughter.
- GINNY: I just think you make it hard on yourself.
- BRIAN: Sweetie, I know you mean well,
but you can't possible underst--
- JACKSON: I get where you're coming from, Brian.
I've been there, and then I realized,
sometimes you're gonna get treated like a nigga,
and you refocus, put your energies
where they're most needed,
and fight the battle from a different angle.
- BRIAN: We've got nothing in common, Jackson.
You didn't get treated like a...
- JACKSON: Like a what, mothafucka?
- BRIAN: You didn't get treated like a...
You got treated like a man who couldn't listen to authority.
And then you quit!
You did that to yourself, over and over again.
You got treated like the hotheaded Black man
with a chip on his shoulder that you are.
I got treated like a nigger.
- JACKSON: Have you lost your...?
He has lost his fucking...
- BRIAN: Wait, hold on.
I'm so sick of hearing
preternaturally beautiful people,
with intelligence and financial viability,
bitch about their lot.
You know what, life sucks, all around.
For us all, unilaterally, life sucks.
Only white people have nothing else upon which to pin it.
Every fucking thing that happens to us
is our own poor judgment and bad luck.
So all y'all motherfuckers can kiss my white ass.
Oh, and another thing.
It's not the end of the world to be exoticized, Ginny.
Like it's some fucking curse
to be someone who everyone wants to fuck.
And the Genius Grant is stupid.
- VALERIE: Good luck with that, Ginny.
- JACKSON: What makes me crazy is that he has the luxury
to let this shit explode his head.
Who the fuck gets to go into a tirade
because race in America is a mindfuck?
Do you get to melt down
because you get treated like shit several times a day?
- VALERIE: No. - JACKSON: Do you, Ginny?
- GINNY: I'm sorry, what?
Oh, were you talking to me?
I'm part of this conversation?
'Cause I was happy to just sit over here in the corner
with the Latinos and some Middle Easterners
and the handful of Native Americans left.
I was happy to just sit here
and watch your conversation about race.
Because it's just so Black and white.
So I'll just sit here and let you all work it out.
- VALERIE: Wow, we do that, don't we?
- GINNY: Yeah, you do.
But it's cool.
Margarita Perez, Andalah Aboud,
Rise with the Fricken Moon Youngblood,
and I will just sit over here and exchange shocking anecdotes
about nail salons, airport security,
and I don't know, genocide.
- BRIAN: Brian returns, removing plates from the table.
- VALERIE: Thank you.
So how did you meet Jackson, Ginny?
- GINNY: I went to his clinic and he assumed I'd been beaten.
- VALERIE: Yeah, me too, at the hospital.
The nurse gave me the, "Are you safe in your home?"
And I was like, "Last time I checked."
It took like five minutes before I understood
what they were asking, which I guess is nice,
that they were concerned.
And then Jackson wants to know who beat me.
And I'm playing it out in my mind, and I think,
did they really think some man was like,
"Yo, bitch, put on that Elizabethan costume
"and get over here so I can beat your ass."
[Ginny laughs]
- JACKSON: There's not a damn thing funny
about domestic violence.
- GINNY: Jackson, do you see how you do that?
Two politically conscious liberals were enjoying a moment
of irreverent levity, and you just shat on it.
- VALERIE: It is totally a power play.
You can always turn a room with "That's not funny."
Watch: "Hey Ginny, did you hear the one
"about the priest, the prostitute, and the paraplegic?"
- GINNY: That's not funny.
- VALERIE: See, now you feel very bad, right?
Because you kinda wanted to hear the joke.
- JACKSON: Wha-- - VALERIE: There's no joke.
That would be sick.
- JACKSON: You gon' need a ride, Val?
- VALERIE: Sure, I guess, thanks.
- BRIAN: Wait, wait, don't go, hey,
Ginny, do the Thanksgiving thing.
Go on, do it.
- GINNY: Maybe we should just... - BRIAN: No, no, no, seriously,
she does the best impersonation of my sister.
- GINNY: What are you doing?
- JACKSON: If she doesn't want to...
- BRIAN: Just tell the goddamned story, please.
- VALERIE: Yeah, Jackson, I'll get my coat.
- GINNY: It was right before dinner...
- BRIAN: We hadn't even carved the turkey.
- GINNY: And they just kept razzing her.
- BRIAN: Razzing?
- GINNY: They're just picking and picking...
You haven't met Brian's sister, have you?
- BRIAN: It doesn't matter. - VALERIE: The one with the kid?
- JACKSON: I need to go. - VALERIE: Let her finish.
And then I do have to go.
I have to catch an early flight.
I have an audition in L.A.
- GINNY: Okay, so there we are, like Norman Rockwell,
except Jimmy's literally bouncing off the walls.
I thought that was a saying,
but the boy's ricocheting off the walls,
and you just know that something disastrous is about to happen.
And Brian's mother's telling Brian's dad
to just say the prayer.
- BRIAN: And Dad's saying, "Not until the boy
"actually sits down at the table."
- GINNY: And Mariam's just sitting there.
And now Jimmy's crawling under the table.
He has PDD-NOS... - VALERIE: Is that a real thing?
- BRIAN: It's somewhere between ADHD, Asperger's, and hell...
He's just so smart and sweet and weird.
- GINNY: So Mariam puts her napkin down, and she stands up.
- BRIAN: Here it comes.
- GINNY: "I just want to say, before we eat,
"that if anyone else has something to say
"about my parenting, they can kiss my ass.
"Because Aunt Rachel could stand to lose 40 pounds,
"Uncle Walter is on his fourth vodka gimlet,
"and Susie has always been a bitch.
"And I don't comment on any of those things."
Shit, dessert.
- BRIAN: I should help.
- GINNY: You always make me do that.
- VALERIE: Here, let me.
- BRIAN: I know I've heard every one of you say to me,
in various ways, at one time or another,
"What the fuck is wrong with your people?"
We were right there with that, weren't we?
- JACKSON: I thought we were.
- BRIAN: I'm sorry.
I was completely out of line
with that Black man, chip on your shoulder shit.
- JACKSON: So out of line.
- BRIAN: I do see how fucked up that was.
- JACKSON: Good.
Val, do you still need a ride?
- VALERIE: So thank you, Ginny, Brian.
It was a lovely evening.
- BRIAN: All I'm trying to say is--
- GINNY: Don't. [chime]
[crowd cheering]
- VOICE: Are you prepared to take the oath, senator?
- Obama: I am.
- BRIAN: January 20th, 2009.
Everyone in his or her separate area.
Brian is scruffy, deeply concentrated.
He sits on a sofa, surrounded by boxes and lab equipment.
He's covered in electrodes, with an oxygen meter,
with syringes and vials of blood.
He's hooked up to a portable EEG.
He looks at a small television.
- GINNY: Ginny is on her couch,
comfortably ensconced in a cashmere throw.
She drinks coffee and watches television,
half thumbs through a Restoration Hardware catalog.
She's on the phone with Valerie,
reporting events of Obama's inauguration.
Oh my God, it's yellow.
A nod to Jackie, but with flair.
- VALERIE: Valerie now sports the long,
well-maintained--not cheap--weave
requisite for all TV ingénues.
She wears a well-tailored shearling coat,
matching hat, expensive winter boots.
She could be a starlet on a Macy's float.
She holds an American flag and a Starbucks cup.
She faces the audience and fights the crush
of an unseen crowd,
far away from the video monitors.
- GINNY: No, it's green.
Chartreuse.
- VALERIE: I can barely see a screen.
Can you hear me?
- GINNY: I thought you had fancy "I'm-on-a-TV-show" tickets.
- VALERIE: I'm in the back of the barely fancy
C-list standing only area.
It's like a mile away from the B+ list.
I thought chartreuse was pink?
- GINNY: They're coming out of the church, getting into cars.
Can you hear me?
I should call you from a landline.
- BRIAN: Brian fiddles with knobs and buttons
on his machines.
The energy and concentration of a scientist
on the edge of his most important discovery.
Brian looks at screens, makes notes,
types on a laptop, searches his arm for a vein.
- VALERIE: No, no, no, no, don't hang up.
I wish you were here!
Unbelieveable.
- GINNY: Oh my God, she's so beautiful.
- VALERIE: Has he come out? - GINNY: Yeah.
You know, he looks how he always does.
- VALERIE: Sooo handsome.
- BRIAN: Brian makes a fist, finds a vein, ties on a band,
searches again for the best vein.
- GINNY: Just beautiful, the whole family.
The girls are so cute.
- VALERIE: It's so fucking cold.
- GINNY: Little coats, oh my God.
They're getting into the car.
VALERIE: Seriously, freezing my ass off.
- GINNY: What are you doing?
- VALERIE: Staring at the back of Rue McClanahan's
and Bea Arthur's heads.
- GINNY: Michelle's mom's getting into the car.
She's gonna take care of the girls.
God, why didn't I come with you? [laughs]
His sister's there, with her family.
Oh my god, his family's like the fucking United Nations.
- VALERIE: It's audacious.
- BRIAN: Brian draws blood.
He turns on the EEG; paper starts to scroll out.
- GINNY: It's exciting. - VALERIE: It's so exciting!
It's cold and exciting!
- GINNY: I wish I were there.
- VALERIE: Then we'd both be cold
and not knowing what's going on.
But it doesn't matter; it's so exciting.
- GINNY: It's so what?
So what-- Valerie?
- VALERIE: Hello, hello?
Damn, Ginny?
Can you get a signal? - GINNY: So what?
- VALERIE: Ginny, Gin? - GINNY: Valerie? Valerie?
I'll call you back.
I'll call you back, Ginny.
- GINNY: Valerie, Val?
If you can hear me, call me back, okay?
- JACKSON: Jackson watches television
as he prepares for work.
[phone rings]
Yes, Ma, I'm watching, really.
I see, I see.
Of course I'm excited, yes.
Ma, are you crying?
But you're okay?
Okay, I know.
I know, me too.
No, I get it.
It could have been me.
No, I'm moved, seriously.
I'm just trying to get to the clinic.
Don't cry, aw Ma, don't cry.
[phone rings]
- GINNY: Val? - VALERIE: This is it.
- BRIAN: Brian turns up the volume on his TV.
- OBAMA: What is required of us now
is a new era of responsibility.
a recognition on the part of every American
that we have duties to ourselves,
our nation, and the world.
Duties that we do not grudgingly accept,
but rather seize gladly.
Firm in the knowledge that there is nothing
so satisfying to the spirit,
so defining of our character,
than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence.
The knowledge that God calls on us
to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty
and our creed.
Why men and women and children of every race and every faith
Can join in celebration
across this magnificent mall.
And why a man whose father,
less than 60 years ago,
Might not have been served at a local restaurant,
Can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
[crowd cheers]
- VALERIE: The lights fade on Valerie.
- JACKSON: On Jackson.
- GINNY: And on Ginny.
- BRIAN: Leaving Brian alone with his couch
and machines and boxes.
The printout from the EEG
flows from the machine like ticker tape.
It prints and prints and prints.
[clocks ticking]
[marching band music]
[clock ticking]
- Brenda: Thank you so much.
I just like hearing that speech at the end, let's be honest.
[all chuckling]
Yeah, thank you.
Melisa, are you there?
- Jacki: One moment, we're getting her from the audience.
- Brenda; Thank you, thank you Jacki.
- Melisa: I'm here now, I've been plucked.
- Brenda: Hi! [applauds]
- Melisa: Well done, well done!
- Brenda: Hi, Joy, nice to see you!
I want to thank the audience for staying with us,
and I want to invite you all
to ask questions in the Q&A section at the top of the chat.
And Carey Cannon will field those questions as they go on,
but I wanted to say thank you.
And also say that this is taped,
if you're watching this on PBS, on PBS Wisconsin,
this talk back is taped,
so I'm sorry you can't touch the button and ask questions.
So thanks, thanks for watching.
I just wanted to first ask you, Melisa,
when we first talked about this play,
you had read a few plays to direct for us,
and I wanted to see-- and I gave you this play,
and you said, "Yes!"
And I just wanted to know, first and foremost,
why you said yes so quickly
and why you felt so passionately about it.
- Melisa: Yeah, I mean, all the conversations, I think,
that often times I am trying to highlight
in a lot of the classic work that we do
seem to be specifically
and textually contextualized in this play.
So for me, I just thought, what a great opportunity
to give actors a chance to verbalize those ideas.
Not just in our heads,
because I'm thinking about that all the time,
about all of those things, and all of those complications,
and all of the racial dynamics
in every interaction that I have.
But to have a play that actually contextualizes that
and gives you actual lines, it's helpful.
And I think one of the first things I told the cast
is that we can dive into this story, both feet in,
and trust that the playwright has protected us, right?
That the playwright is writing this
with trying to understand racial dynamics and explaining it,
both for herself and her audience.
And a better conversation about white supremacy
and what that means, not just then, but today.
How insidious it can be.
That it's not just the people that are, you know,
violent with their actions,
but actually violent with their words.
At APT, we say that words matter.
And I feel like this is, in order for us
to uphold that value system,
bringing this play into our storytelling
goes along with our values that say, "Yeah, words matter."
And these words needed to exist this week, I think.
And within our organization, that we're not just--
yes, that we are doing the classics
and we're finding the dynamics and the specificity
and multi-dynamicness, if you will,
of universality in the classics,
but we're also doing it with more recent works
that protect, in particular, actors of color
by addressing some of these conversations head-on
so that we don't have to do that all by ourselves.
- Brenda: Yeah, I think that's a really nuanced conversation
between artists especially, that I wanna just expound on
or have us talk a little bit more about.
Because I think when we talk about the work
as artists of color inside of predominantly white plays,
it's often completely unkown to folks what that means.
The extra burden and the extra kind of,
when we say it's inherently inequitable
to step into those plays,
the extra work it takes someone of color to work inside of that.
Do you guys want to talk a little bit about that
as artists, like what that actually means?
So the audience has a little bit better idea
what we're talking about.
Like these characters actually have language for them
to speak to the actual moment.
And we talked a little bit one time, a few readings ago,
about let's say, Death of a Salesman ,
when the neighbors were recast as African American,
but there was no language for those actors.
Although they were excited to play into that story,
we talked a lot about that there was no language to specifically
address their race.
So could you talk a little bit about that
from your perspective?
And perhaps some of the actors would like to as well.
- Melisa: Yeah, I mean... - Brenda: Yes, your burden, yes.
I think anybody can-- Yeah, Cassia, go ahead,
I was like, "Anybody can go."
- Cassia: All right, thank you.
I'll jump in here.
It actually came up during my first vocal session
with Joy, when we were working on text that as an actor,
particularly as an actor who primarily does classical work,
there's always this assumption with audience members
but also with the people that I work with
that it's often thought of that I'm secretly,
covertly playing a white person.
Like yeah, like they hired me as a Black person for diversity,
but like, the character remains white.
And that has been implied to me, and that has been said verbatim,
that like, "Oh, that's so cool that they hired you,
"but you're playing a white role, right?
"Like, you're playing a white girl."
And you know, so just the idea, coming up with the idea
that I had to leave who I am at the door,
even though that's not possible; this is my skin,
but I had to leave it at the door.
And the very first time I had a director say to me
that my character could be Black, it was a revelation.
And I was almost embarrassed that it had never occured to me
to fight for that before.
But I remember, I was sitting at the table read
and we were talking about my character,
and my character happened to be a teacher for inner city kids,
and she mentioned, she's like,
"Oh, your students would connect with you, of course,
"'cause they're Black and you're Black."
And I was like, "What?"
And she was like, "Cassia, you're a Black woman,
"so obviously your character is Black."
And it blew my mind.
'Cause mind you, the costume rendering on the wall,
like all of my costume renderings
the entire time I was in college were blonde white women.
You know? - Brenda: Yes.
- Cassia: And ever since that moment, I've been,
I've made it a mission to have these conversations
because just the weight that came off me in that moment
of knowing no, I can be who I am.
I can show up, I'm not covertly playing a white woman.
Valerie's journey, that Black can mean
so many different things; Ginny talks about it as well.
But that is, that's a thing.
I know when I first step on stage,
particularly when I'm playing leads or if I'm playing lovers,
my body is a distraction.
I watch the audience take me in, and eight times out of ten,
it's, "Oh, they hired a Black girl, okay cool, cool, cool."
And they're with it.
The ninth time out of ten, it's like,
"Jesus, a diversity?
"Okay, are you actually good?"
And then you know, I win them over.
And then the tenth time out of ten
is people actively sitting back and rejecting me.
And I've seen people, like look at me, and then very,
as obviously as they could, like settle in
and like go to sleep or like pull out their phones
or anything, like "I'm rejecting you."
So it's those barriers coming into the room
and stepping on stage, like you have to--
It's the battle of how do you open your heart
and leave everything you have on stage
while also protecting it
and making sure that the audience or your director
or your cast members' reactions to you don't kill you, y'know?
I think about it every time
when I hear Jackson's line of, "My soul has to be intact
"to do my work."
And it's a tightrope; it's a very delicate dance.
- Joy Lanceta Coronel: I would just like to step in
and speak on Cassia and mine session on--
we focused one whole session on code switching.
On how does she speak to her family
versus how she speaks in the rehearsal room
versus how she speaks as an actor.
And that, I think was just...
I saw Cassia really feel empowered by that,
to have those choices based on her lived experience.
So this was a very unique process,
not only for me to witness,
but also just seeing the actors as well.
- Brenda: Anyone else want to speak to that?
We had a situation-- Thank you, Cassia.
That was a wonderful explanation
of what seems so obvious now when you say it.
We had a moment when we were doing auditions years ago,
a room full of white folks auditioning African Americans
for a particular role, and a woman came up on stage
and she said, before she started, and she said,
"Am I doing this, am I white or am I Black?"
And I was like, "I'm sorry?"
And she's like, "Am I supposed to be white in this
"or Black in this?"
And it had never, ever occurred to me
that that was a question for someone to have to bear,
that question.
It was a moment, it was a real watershed moment
for my brain to like, start to really, really examine
what we're asking people to do.
And so yeah, it seems so obvious once it's there for some of us,
and it should have been obvious a long time ago.
So, learning, right?
We have some questions out there,
someone had asked a question, Melisa, about,
we talked a little bit about how this play,
how this play in a reading, in a week, go.
This play in a reading, in a week, Zoom, go.
And do you want to speak a little bit to that?
This play, you could talk about for months,
rehearse for weeks and weeks.
- Melisa: Yeah, the intersectionality
of the experience is just unique in and of itself.
I don't share, even demographically,
a life experience with any of the people in the cast, period.
You know, so I love, I actually really love the conversation
that gets sparked at the end of the play, you know,
where it's like, oh, the race conversation is Black and white,
and you know, the Latinas and the Asians and all the,
everybody else gets put somewhere else.
And that, to me, was really powerful.
Because I thought that in our room,
we had a pretty overwhelming amount of representation
from people from everywhere.
And I was like,
"Oh, this is what intersectionality feels like."
And that in and of itself makes me, as directing this play
on Zoom, I had to pick people just that I really trust
and that I love and that also know themselves.
That was important.
I can't explain, in particular I can't explain, you know,
to Cassia what it's like to be a Black woman.
You know, that's not how that's gonna work.
In the same way that I can't explain to Jeb
what it's like, how white supremacy works.
He needs to understand that in his own behavior
so that he understands then how that, in what ways
that plays a part in the play.
And how those behaviors seep into all of the conversations
in some way or another,
and how every character in the play internalizes that
as well, in one way or another.
So that is not a week's work.
That's life's work. [Brenda laughs]
That is life's work all the time, always.
And I just, I'm grateful that I walked my life
in a path where I got to meet these amazing creatives
that were willing to say yes to this new medium,
and that were willing to work on the intersectionality
of this play in such a specific way
with the short time that we had.
Let alone, from a very basic perspective,
just making sure the audience understands who is on stage
right now and who isn't, right?
Because I think one of the really great things
about the play is that
it functions in an intersectional way.
So structurally, the characters are always going like this,
they're meeting each other and they're intertwining,
and one of them is going this way.
So it was so hard to separate what I saw in my head
with the staging, with what we were able to do on Zoom.
But I really wanted to respect
that the playwright put that in there on purpose.
So yeah, that's what I say.
I'm just grateful that I got to meet people that know themselves
in a deep way so that we could all come together
and make something that's bigger and better than us
and anything we could do as individuals.
- Brenda: Yeah, the play really does...
It opens so many more questions obviously than it answers.
It's not trying to answer anything.
It just breaks open one question after another question,
one stereotype after another.
It takes a stereotype and then smashes it
against an anti-stereotype.
It's amazing.
I wanted to ask the actors,
what, in the week's time you've had
to be with these people what do you identify with?
Or what could you grab onto?
Yes, Amy?
- Amy Kim Waschke: So you know, it was so great
to have this play because, like we're talking about,
if you're trying to shape another play to your view,
this one-- I'm adopted.
So I'm constantly, me, personally, Amy,
is constantly looking at my white adjacency, right?
And so for that to be one of the things that
Ginny is like, struggling with,
you know, the privilege of being Asian-American,
where we do have a lot of privilege
in terms of like, we are considered the model minority
and we're considered smart and hard workers
and all these things, and responsible, right?
And so those things help us in the world, with jobs
and you know, getting apartments and all those things, right?
And then you know, and then the flip side is you know,
we still experience micro and macroagression
and racism and all those things too.
But it was just really, it was a great process
for me to be asking myself all the time, you know,
"Where am I?
"What's my temperature in this environment
"and with these people?"
So I really appreciate Melisa for bringing me on on this.
- Brenda: Thank you, Amy, thank you.
Rasell, do you want to say something?
Come on, I know you just love to talk.
- Rasell Holt: I just felt like someone's gonna ask me to talk.
Um, no, I think one of the major things
that I came in with, with Jackson is,
I told Melisa this, I ain't really like him none.
And you know, that's to whoever, I just don't feel like
a whole lot like Jackson in many ways.
But one of the things I was, when I'm trying to find him
and figure out, you know, what we're gonna do with this,
is locking on to what similarities we do have,
outside of you know, just how we look.
But like, one of the things he carries with him
is this huge chip on his shoulder,
about the circumstances he come up from,
searching for validation from not just his job
and personal life, like he carries so much weight
of like even at home, he's not getting the sort of validation
he kind of seeks in terms of like, he's a surgeon,
but still his mom is in his ear about like,
"You could have been the president, though."
Like what I'm doing now isn't enough.
And I think that's like, part of the reason
or sort of how his anger seems to manifest in a lot of scenes,
specifically with Valerie.
Like he kinda pops off on her for not a very strong reason.
But yeah, his ego gets hit and he feels invalidated
even in this romantic relationship,
and then, let alone, y'know,
we see how things function for him at his job.
So just trying to track like,
what anger brings to his character
and how that manifests in different ways
and how he interacts with the different characters
in the play.
I feel like if we had more time,
one of the ones I wish I knew a little better, personally,
was his relationship to Brian.
That's a interesting friendship to have.
And that's one that, if we had a real rehearsal process,
that would have been one I'd have more questions about.
But there we go, that's-- - Brenda: Yeah.
[Rasell laughing] Yeah, I'd like to see
that rehearsal. [laughing]
[all laughing] I'd like to see those rehearsals.
Carey Cannon, are you out there?
I see there's a whole bunch of questions on the...
- Carey: Yeah, you're answering some of them.
Hi, well done, thank you so much friends.
Cage is here with us, and he asked,
Cage Sebastian Pierre, who's a wonderful friend
and colleague.
Do you think the play supports one character's argument
or thought process over another?
And if so, whose and why?
- Melisa: We have to, right? [laughing]
I think if we had a character going, "Um, it's mine."
[laughing] No.
At first actually, I can only speak for what I think,
but I told Cassia this too, I think,
but I was like, "Why does Brian get so much stage time?"
Why, why?
And yet, for once, I was like,
I'm just glad that it's not only the people of color
who are talking about racism being a problem.
That was, I was like, "Finally!"
Everyone else, great, someone else has to carry that
and deal with that and wrestle with that and unpack that.
So it's a complicated thing that I don't know, that at first
I didn't like that he got all of the language, right, about that.
Whereas there is a duality to that, that is like, "Oh."
And I just think that's on purpose, 'cause...
- Brenda: Yeah.
Yeah, I have to say, I was reading a lot about this play,
and Jeb, thank you for your performance.
Thank you so much.
I was reading a lot about the play,
and that's basically what I was understanding about it,
is that to put it all in the mouth of the cis, white man
made it impossible for most people to dismiss.
The people watching, a lot of the folks out here watching.
And also made-- - Melisa: Can I say...
- Brenda: Yeah, go ahead.
- Melisa: I would say, for white people to dismiss,
in particular. - Brenda: That's what I mean,
for white folks like, I'm sorry, I should have identified.
For white folks to dismiss.
Yeah, all the white folks to dismiss.
And also, but also it made it for...
He kept putting his foot in his mouth, just like I just did.
Kept putting his foot in his mouth over and over
and over again in front of us.
And then to watch the other people listen to him,
for me, for other white folks to watch other people
listen to him talk was also incredibly helpful
because it makes it impossible, again, to dismiss.
The fact that he keeps putting his foot in his mouth,
you can hear it.
You can hear it.
And you guys are saying out loud
and these characters are saying over and over again,
"We hear it all the time.
"This is what you live with every day."
And I just don't think-- I think for our audience,
and specifically when we were picking this play,
Melisa, when we talked about it, that those are a lot of,
I daresay, I hope I get some comments,
that a lot of these ideas and suggestions
and these notions put out in front of this audience
is a lot of new ideas, I think, in some respects.
Yes, Cassia.
- Cassia: And if I can add on top of that,
I want to say, and this was also in conversation with Melisa,
part of the reason I think Brian is centered
is because of the way that each of the POC characters
has internalized and digested
and sometimes spouts out white supremacy in their own ways.
Melisa said in the very first rehearsal,
and she was absolutely right,
they're either working against white supremacy
or they are uplifting it.
It's always one or the other; they're never standing still.
So it's interesting not only to hear a white person
and a "good" white person grapple with these issues
and talk about it and try to change the world,
but seeing the ways in which these people
are just trying to live their lives,
and they do have some times when they directly talk about it,
but otherwise, they're skating past it
or they're addressing it in their work or like Valerie,
she just assumed that Jackson wasn't a doctor.
Like, I think that's also part, in an interesting way,
like no, there need only be one white person in the play
'cause that's all that's needed
to kind of throw off the lives and the internal balances
of everybody else in the room who doesn't have that power.
- Brenda: Yeah, how you interact, yep.
How you have to interact with him and with yourselves.
Carey, what else you got?
- Cary: Yeah, I mean, we have lots of what's,
kind of wonderfully, "What's next" sort of questions.
So I'm gonna read them.
Becky Mann says, this question is for Jeb
and then it continues on, a follow-up.
"How did this experience help you understand implicit racism
"and misogyny?
"Your character was hilarious, and exactly what a lot of POC
"complain about when they talk about white people.
"How do you practice actually changing racism
"with white counterparts?"
I know a little bit about that,
'cause Jeb is active in creating community groups
here in Spring Green.
But Becky goes on to say, "This is just an extension
"to my question.
"His character was the epitome of what POC talk about
"when we talk about how white people try to interrupt racism.
"How do you actually do that in real life?"
And Nicole also says, our dear Nicole, says,
"Right now in the world we're currently living in,
"more and more people are starting
"to have important conversations about race
"and being actively anti-racist.
"What would you, anyone in the group, say to someone
"who's a close friend, not a stranger,
"who's coming into their 'wokeness' in quotes,
"and is well-meaning but may go too far
"in conversations in their eagerness?"
Those are all of a type.
Thank you.
- Brenda: Anyone?
Anyone, what would you...
- Jeb Burris: I think... - Brenda: Go ahead, Jeb.
...probably yes.
Like, that was a lot, so I don't know
exactly what I remember, but for Brian, like,
I really hope that white people watching this can see
the impact of what he's actually, like not the stuff
he's trying to sound good at saying and doing,
but what the impact of how he is acting
and what he is actually saying to the people he is friends with
and loves because that's the real harm.
And he not once, and it's obviously not an accident
that he not once recognizes it or apologizes for it.
And he just falls back on misogyny,
on the patriarchy, and on white supremacy
at any second his ego is off-kilter,
he goes right back to it.
And he never, ever once talks about
"Oh, I actually learned this lesson about myself,
"how I, as a white man, interact in this world
"and the harm that I have done."
He just says, "Well, I studied five more years
"'cause there's a lot of argument
"to get your head around."
So I y'know, I hope that, I hope that we can
see ourselves in that
and learn from all of his mistakes.
- Brenda: Anyone else?
I was gonna say that I think that also, I think that
what's helpful about it;
I'm gonna speak to it from my perspective,
or the perspective other white folks watching might think,
um, is that when you take a character
and you make them an advocate to the degree
that their entire life's work is supposedly advocacy,
or about racism and identifying the problem with racism
in white folks, and you put that person in--
these words and these actions in his mouth,
it's like, "Take a look at yourself."
I mean, no matter who you are, take a look at yourself.
No matter what you are doing and walking through the world doing,
take a look at yourself.
Continually take a look at yourself.
And that it, like you said Melisa,
it is an ongoing, everlasting journey.
Of identifying how you interact.
Um, yeah.
- Carey: I just wanted to say,
we only have a few more minutes left,
and this is to the whole group, is that this--
and this goes back to something Cassia said,
a line in the play, the idea of having a soul
that is whole, that is necessary to take care of others
and do your work.
And Sarah asked if the actors, how they bring that wholeness
to their souls during this particular moment in time?
How that allows you to bring your voice to your art today?
It's a big question with a couple of minutes,
but I think it's an important one.
- Melisa: I can begin, and I'll keep it short.
But I think for me, it was about surrounding myself
with these specific people.
For this week, we were not going to make art
under the guise of #captialism.
Like, we were going to actually make...
We don't have to feel bad about ourselves
before we earn feeling good about ourselves.
Every day, we were gonna come in
and we were gonna feel good about what we were doing,
and we were gonna do our job on our own terms.
In our own safe spaces, which is in many of, everybody's homes.
You're surrounded by things that are yours, that you love.
You get to be your own judge in a lot of ways
of your own work, which all of us have incredibly high bars
as to what we consider good.
And for me, I just kept thinking,
we don't have to feel good-- we don't have to feel bad first
before we earn feeling good when we make art.
We should get to feel good all the time
because what we do is so hard to accomplish.
So I'm, that was like healing for me
to approach the work from that perspective.
That stress at this time, in this medium,
it was not going to be a part of how we made this
because the material can already be so triggering as is,
so the least we could give ourselves is grace.
- Cassia: And I'll hop on and continue off of Melisa.
I know for me personally, I needed to grant myself space.
I jettisoned all responsibilities
that are not day-to-day responsibilities
in this play because I knew that this conversation
and this process would just takes so much,
especially in this time of consistent stress,
daily pandemic, and attacks on Black people,
and in this pandemic, the heightened attack
on East Asian people, and just all of the violence
and stress that's surrounding us all the time,
I said, "No," and cleared my schedule
of anything that wasn't this play or myself and my family.
And I've also cleared out all of next week,
because I know I'm going to need to take the week
to just get back to myself
and feel settled and whole again.
So that's just my personal thing.
I'm just like, "Okay, so not only do I need joy,
"I need everybody, if it's not important, go away,
"'cause this is. [Brenda lauging]
"This is important to me."
- Carey: Amy or Jeb or Rasell?
Or Joy?
- Brenda: Okay, no one has to talk.
- Carey: Go ahead, well good, well, we're at time,
unless Joy has something?
You looked like you were gonna say something, Joy.
- Joy: Okay.
You know, I just, I just,
everybody in the cast knows I have a newborn baby,
I'm living with my parents during this pandemic,
it's a very crazy time.
And I teach, but I feel as though the theater
is a very special space.
And there's something about the theater that allows you
to escape, both as an audience member and as a creative.
But then there's also something about the leaders of the space
who create that world for you,
and I, you know, I really commend Melisa
and Jacki and APT for creating a space for us
to really just focus on the art.
And y'know, there have been many rehearsals
when I do my one-on-one coaching
and I hear my daughter screaming in the background,
but it's just a very, I think it's...
Having the unity of understanding
that this is a sacred place, this is a safe space,
this is a place where we are allowed to be ourselves.
And particularly for this show,
where we are talking about things that relate
to our own lived experiences
and the things that we're seeing out in the world.
And we're able to examine it and to tell a story through it
as opposed to seeing it happen on the news.
And I think that was a really special experience
for this show in particular.
So it is very special.
- Amy: I think that any time that I get to have rehearsal,
[all laughing] it's a win.
And I would just say that, I guess the thing...
This pandemic has been brutal for artists,
and what I realized a lot
is with everything that's going on in the world,
I realized how strongly linked my personal activism is
to my art.
And so the chance to do specifically this play,
and to tell this story and to speak to racism
and the inequity in our world, I mean, that fed me a lot.
And I'm super grateful for it.
So, and then when I started to feel overwhelmed
or, that's when I just... I have a cockapoo,
and his name is Gus, and he is the cutest thing ever,
and I just snuggled the crud out of him.
Okay, that's it. [Brenda applauding]
- Brenda: All right, I just have to say thank you, everybody.
Thank you so much.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your talents
and your time with us.
And I appreciate you all so much.
This is giving me a lot to think about tonight.
And I want to thank the audience for being here too.
So everyone, take care, please take care of yourselves.
Please, and each other.
And I'm grateful for you.
- Melisa: Bye bye! - Brenda: Bye!
And vote, vote! - Melisa: Vote, vote, vote!
- Brenda: And vote, vote vote! - Melisa: Vote, vote!
[laughing] Vote!
[lively string music]
- Announcer: Funding for APT's "Out of the Woods"
is provided by
Arcadia Books,
Dane Arts,
Nancy A. McDaniel,
Orange Tree Imports,
Wilson Creek Pottery,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.