For some reason I’ve never quite
understood, ambiguity is a key factor in much dramatic literature from the
early-mid-20th century on. I’m not talking about merely the grand experimenters
and stylistic iconoclasts (like Ionesco, Becket and Pirandello), but also those
who tell stories in more defined terms; as if part of the exercise is pointedly
leaving something for the audience to ponder and debate and define for
themselves. Depending on the playwright and the play (and the period in the
writer’s career, as with Pinter and Albee, although even they are more overt practitioners than the more
contemporary dramatists in their wake), this can provide depth and fascination
or just prove a crutch for a lack of substance. It often manifests itself in
depictions of social mores and societal conventions; a character behaves in
such a way as to force another character (or characters) to act
uncharacteristically, a basic paradigm of daily survival gets shattered, and as
the play’s characters pick up the pieces (if they do; if they can), they have
to decide how they’ll redefine themselves (if they can; if they will) and the
biggest question of all is usually about the catalyst character. What did s/he
really intend by setting off that chain of events. What was s/he thinking? Did
s/he know how one thing would lead to another or was it just a gamble?
In
many, perhaps most contemporary plays that play this game (by which I mean
plays of recent generations) the use of ambiguity is little more than an
annoyance; but Joel Drake Johnson’s
Rasheeda Speaking (superbly
directed by Cynthia Nixon and featuring
a crackerjack cast) is playing a
far slyer game than most. We start off in the medical office of Doctor Williams
(unflinchingly controlling Darren Goldstein), who is, via charm and manipulation, pressuring
his longtime office employee Ileen (a sweet and mousy Dianne Wiest) to spy on her co-worker Jaclyn. The doctor seems
the very poster boy for urban racism that would deny its existence as he
discusses and describes the faults of the African American Jaclyn, and it is
only under duress that Ileen agrees at least that Jaclyn’s behavior is not
always ideal; for you see Ileen genuinely likes Jackyn.
But
then Jaclyn enters (in the person of human dynamo Tonya Pinkins) and guess what, folks: she’s exactly as
the doctor described her, a genuinely problematic employee. That she’s African
American seems almost beside the point,
except that she has that thang and
that tude that exacerbate
the impression. But Ileen seems genuinely
unconcerned with all that and genuinely wants to get Jaclyn out of Dutch with
the boss, but her efforts to help are so lacking in finesse (she’s not at all
good at being surreptitious) that it doesn’t take Jaclyn long to suss out that
she’s on some kind of tenuous probation.
And
Jaclyn begins to change the game.
The
how is what I dast not tell you, lest the game be guv away, but it’s a slow
escalation, and it brings to the surface any number of manifestations of casual
bigotry as it still exists in the present day. But it would be wrong to think
of Jaclyn as the corrective force who puts all white attitudes in perspective.
Because her motives and intentions are
withheld. Just when you think you understand her as a product of society, she
pulls a reversal that makes you question the legitimacy of her claim to any
societal paradigm as a rationale.
By
the end, she has triggered such a change in office dynamics that we have, in a
sense, entered the land of Harold Pinter. Because unless you persist in being
uncompromisingly literal minded (which perhaps the playwright would enjoy your
being, because what better wellspring from which to confront the prejudices
that hide than intractability?), there is no
absolute reality. It just seems as
if there is, because the play’s vocabulary is presentational. But unlike most
plays employing ambiguity, Rasheeda Speaking doesn’t merely seek to engage your intellect, but (I
think) to back you into a corner. Any
stand you take on the story you’ve seen
enacted is both right and wrong, both racist and unbiased. There’s no correct
interpretation, but by getting caught in its web, the genuine issues being
raised become immediate and visceral.
Which
is as good a reason for ambiguity as ever I’ve encountered.
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