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San Francisco Chronicle
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Rarely performed Lorraine Hansberry play attests once again to the playwright's genius
In a fictional African country, a prodigal son returns home from his white wife in Europe, hoping to say goodbye to his dying father. Instead, Tshembe finds himself in the crossfire of a colonial 'emergency,' what whites call their own violence. His wayward brothers are no help, and an obnoxious American journalist spouts a lot of easy-for-him-to-say ideas about how Tshembe ought to live his life. Such is the heavy, heady milieu of Lorraine Hansberry's 'Les Blancs,' which was incomplete when she died in 1965 at age 34 and premiered five years later with edits by her widower Robert Nemiroff. To enter the world of the play is to be smacked upside the head with its young writer's insight and imagination. She didn't just dream up characters but their whole society and history — how religion interacts with healthcare and different political factions; how centuries of white predation and plunder might push different personalities toward different choices. Oakland Theater Project's production, which I saw Sunday, July 20, adds still another layer to this thick context. Under the direction of James Mercer II, all the characters — Black, white and mixed race; male and female — are played by Black women. As Tshembe (Jeunée Simon) squares off with parachute journalist Charlie (Champagne Hughes); brother Abioseh (Brittany Sims), who's converted to the white man's religion; and colonizing soldier Major Rice (Monique Crawford), a series of thoughts might strike you. Second, how much Oakland Theater Project's cast kills it. In the role of put-upon Doctor DeKoven, Aidaa Peerzada makes every utterance a toxic brew of rage and regret. Her circumstances have eaten her to the bone, and all she has left is hunched shoulders and gritted teeth. As the notepad-toting Charlie, Hughes burlesques bumptious white masculinity — furrowed brow, thrust lower jaw, 'of course I get to be here' eyes — in a way that makes you want to tell every white man the world over that this is what he looks like, at least psychologically. Simon, in a part originated by James Earl Jones, makes clear that her character has the stuff of kings from her first entrance, when Tshembe's hoping to catch his father's last words but learns he's just missed them. Simon's face falls, then turns to ice. Something smolders inside, then gets pushed back down. She carries on, but everything around her feels heavier. Such a man could shoulder a whole nation's woes. For all these virtues, 'Les Blancs' is an easier play to admire than love. Multiple important characters — referred to often, shaping the events onstage — never appear. Scene one snatches us in medias res; history's been churning along just fine without us, and it'll keep going after the play's over, Hansberry implies. It's intricate and clever, but you feel like you're always playing catch-up. The speeches are beautiful, perceptive, as biting today as they were in 1970: 'I do not 'hate' all white men — but I desperately wish that I did. It would make everything infinitely easier!' Tshembe says. 'I have arrested gangrene, removed tumors, pulled forth babies — and, in so doing, if you will please try to understand, I have helped provide the rationale for genocide,' Dr. DeKoven laments. But as Act Two sprawls outward, 'Les Blancs' starts to feel like a civilization undoing in real time instead of a discrete, honed dramatic incident. It's epic, but in a way that doesn't energize so much as exhaust.
San Francisco Chronicle
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: Oakland Theater Project's ‘Ironbound' is a one-of-a-kind love story
Imagine a love story where you don't root for love. No, that's too simple, and Martyna Majok's 'Ironbound' is all about ambivalence, the impossibility of definitions, the irrelevance of categories. As a Polish immigrant named Darja waits at the same godforsaken Newark bus stop in various eras in her life, forms of love creep in with three different boys and men, and the sentimentalist in you might find familiar gears creaking in your mind — an 'if only' here, a 'why can't he' there. But in Oakland Theater Project's production, Darja (Lisa Ramirez) herself will likely soon dash your hopes of any wooing with a sneer at and ban of 'nice conversation.' The show, which opened Sunday, May 4, at the garage attached to Oakland's Flax Art & Design, gets its title from a Newark neighborhood whose name suggests the hardness of Darja's life as a factory worker turned cleaning lady who speaks broken English. Whether it's 2014 and she's waiting to confront her partner Tommy (Daniel Duque-Estrada), or it's 1992 and she and her husband Maks (Adam KuveNiemann) are parlaying their loose change hauls into sexual favors with each other, Darja's world stamps out softness. Love, and you weaken yourself. Hitch your fate to someone else's star, and you might come crashing down with him. Better to count on dollars and cents. In Majok's astonishing craftsmanship, everyone's a klutz and a dunderhead, but all her fools are wise. Watch how, on realizing that the argument he's embarking on to convince Darja to stay with him is a dead end, Duque-Estrada's Tommy tries to back out of it with a logical and emotional three-point turn, pivoting every which way and hoping Darja won't notice. Or how he has to do a little mental math to confirm that 14 liaisons really is more than 12. As in Majok's 'Cost of Living,' which Duque-Estrada also starred in for Oakland Theater Project, the performer takes a dopey character seriously, underscoring the pathos of trying and failing, blundering ahead without seeing the mess you're in. You start wishing he could win her over. But then when he fights dirty, he reveals Darja's own blindness and how inhospitable their impoverished world is for love, at least of the kind we've been taught to idealize. A triggered Darja springs to violence like a lioness; you practically see claws sprouting from Ramirez's hands. When circumstance strips Darja of everything — shelter, companionship, desirability, dignity — Ramirez somehow makes her face into an avalanche. You see every facade crumbling away and a lost soul groping for any foothold. KuveNiemann is just as devastating as an artistic soul whose need for expression seems to pour out his eyeballs, as is Kevin Rubultan as a mysterious bus stop denizen whose many wannabe rapper gestures conceal an aching loneliness. If Emilie Whelan's direction sometimes lacks a driving urgency and the company's small stage somehow seems too cavernous for the actors to fill a mostly empty set, these finely calibrated performances develop a point that few writers would be able to make in any satisfying way. What if not-great, just-OK love is the best available option? Maybe, when couples that hurt each other stay together, knee-jerk condemnation is just too easy, bespeaking privilege. Maybe makeshift, flawed, doomed, toxic love is love too.
San Francisco Chronicle
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Bay Area arts groups stunned by Trump's sweeping grant cancellations
Several Bay Area arts organizations were blindsided after the National Endowment for the Arts abruptly rescinded their federal grants, part of a broader Trump administration overhaul of federal arts policy that has upended cultural institutions nationwide. At least seven arts nonprofits in the region, including San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center, the Oakland Theater Project and Circo Zero, received termination notices Friday stating their projects no longer aligned with the administration's newly defined priorities. The NEA emails cited a pivot toward funding projects that 'reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President,' including efforts to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, support military veterans and empower houses of worship. 'Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities,' the letter stated. Projects focused on underserved communities or diversity in the arts, once a central pillar of NEA funding, are now excluded. The New Conservatory Theatre Center received notice that its $20,000 grant for the world premiere of 'Simple Mexican Pleasures' has been rescinded. In the message addressed to Executive Director Barbara Hodgen, the NEA cited a shift in agency priorities under the Trump administration, stating that the project no longer aligns with new funding goals. Circo Zero, a dance organization that promotes BIPOC and LGBTQ participation in technical theater roles, saw its $50,000 NEA grant halted. Artistic Director Keith Hennessy said the group had already spent much of the money and is awaiting a final reimbursement. 'Some of us are halfway through a project and have already been partially reimbursed,' Hennessey said in an email to the Chronicle. 'Some were awarded money, signed contracts, and committed to many artists and staff, but have not started it yet, so this announcement is more of a 'pulling the rug out,' destabilizing their upcoming production.' The Oakland Theater Project had been awarded $30,000 for the 2026 world premiere of 'Moby Dick,' by playwright Erik Ehn. Managing Director Colin Mandlin said the company has received only half the funds, adding that plans for the production may need to be scaled back. Meanwhile, Danielle Grant, director of programs at SCRAP, San Francisco's Creative Reuse Depot, lost a $25,000 grant intended to fund sustainable fashion workshops for underserved youth. 'We don't fit any of those 'new priorities,'' Grant told KQED. The NEA confirmed that projects outside the administration's new focus areas are being terminated effective May 31. Organizations have until June 30 to request final payments for completed work. Appeals must be filed within seven days. Uncertainty looms for organizations with pending NEA applications. Andrew Smith, executive director of the Lab in San Francisco, said his organization anticipated the shift and moved NEA-funded programming forward to ensure reimbursement. But like many in the region, he's uncertain about future support. The upheaval extends beyond the NEA. Last month, the National Endowment for the Humanities began informing state humanities councils and grantees that their funding was also being terminated immediately. In some cases, notices were sent from a Department of Government Efficiency email address and signed by NEH acting director Michael McDonald. 'Your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities,' the letters said. 'The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.' The NEH, whose $207 million annual budget is distributed largely through state agencies, had awarded $22.6 million in grants just six days before President Donald Trump returned to office. Those included funding for regional museum exhibitions, inclusive historical programming and local cultural preservation initiatives — many of which have now been nullified. California Humanities, which had regranted NEH funds to several Bay Area groups, is among the affected. These sweeping changes follow Trump's earlier efforts to shutter the NEH, NEA, and then Institute of Museum and Library Services entirely. The administration has also pressured the Smithsonian Institution to alter museum programming, purged political opponents from the Kennedy Center board, and launched a crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across federally funded cultural institutions.
