Myth #1: You can live anywhere you please in Grand Rapids.
Myth #2: All Grand Rapids schools are created equal.
Myth #3: The justice system is always just.
Professor, director and playwright Stephanie Sandberg blows a doleful horn with her newest theatre production, Lines: The Lived Experience of Race. Lines reminds us that racial division didn't die with the Civil Rights Movement of 1964; it didn't die with the inauguration of our first biracial president; and it's alive and particularly well-entrenched in the geographical, educational and religious make-up of Grand Rapids.
"The title Lines came from part of an interview, which you'll hear in the monologue that opens the play," Sandberg said. "You look around [Grand Rapids] and see very clear divisions — in politics, in neighborhoods, in schooling. The different types of lines structure the play. There are geographical lines, then psychological, then class lines, and even blood lines."
Like Sandberg's last play, Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians, which premiered in 2007, Lines is a piece of ethnographic theatre, also known as documentary or testimony theatre. The only qualification for this type of theatre is that all the speech in the script must come from interviews with real people.
Sandberg and her student research assistant Abby Koning conducted a total of 162 interviews, each 90 minutes long, with a diversity of Grand Rapids residents about their experiences with race. Then they along with a team of transcribers worked through the 14 days and seven hours of interview answers to find common threads and the best expressions of people's experiences with race. Needless to say, the play has been two-and-a-half years in the making.
| Lines: The Lived Experience of Race Actors' Theatre, Grand Rapids Oct. 1, 2, 7-9 $24 for general admission, $20 for seniors/students, $10 rush tickets available to students 45 mins. prior to showtime actorstheatregrandrapids.org, (616) 234-3946 |
Sandberg described many of the stories she encountered in the interviews as "painful" and "passive" — stories about unlawful incarcerations, blatant profiling, abuse, educational disparity, and economic injustice.
"I heard many stories about not knowing what to do, about helplessness," Sandberg said. "We need to learn how to tell these passive stories so that they empower and become active stories."
The play compresses these stories into "seven main voices," as Sandberg describes them, which will be performed by seven actors, each playing between three and six characters. The stage setting will be projections of actual photographs of the city.
In relating what she hopes to accomplish with such a theatre piece, Sandberg compares theatre to the village shaman.
"The villagers bring their sick to the shaman, and the shaman is supposed to take that disease on himself and perform it out," Sandberg said, "which is a good metaphor for theatre. Theatre's where we perform out our diseases."
Sandberg hopes her next play, Lines: The Lived Experience of Race, will help expel the social disease of racism from Grand Rapids communities and serve as a catalyst for action.
Other Theatre Events
By Heather Smith
Our Town
Grand Rapids Civic Theatre
Oct. 15-17, 20-23, 27-30, shows at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
$14-$25
grct.org, 616.222.6650
Our Town, the Tony Award-winning drama for best revival, focuses on Grover's Corners, a New Hampshire town and how change begins to affect society. Emily Webb and George Gibbs set the stage in the late 1930s and ‘40s and show life's journey. The drama takes you through their childhood, marriage, death and even the afterlife. After Emily dies during childbirth she decides to re-live parts of her past and soon realizes how much life should be valued.
Take Me Out
Kalamazoo Theatre
Oct. 7-9, 14-17, shows at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
$20
wmich.edu/theatre, (269) 387-6222
Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning locker room drama showcases the struggles a gay baseball star faces as he comes out of the closet. This performance explores homophobia, class, racism, and masculinity with unflinching honesty and comedic compassion. As a result it may not be suitable for all audiences as it contains nudity. Greenberg created the drama to heavily rely on the audience's narration to help move the plot forward.
Murder Mystery Dinner ‘Death on the Stage'
Muskegon Fraulenthal
Oct. 15 & 16, 7 p.m.
$30
frauenthal.org, (231) 722-2890
After producer Melissa Flop's last successful show, ‘Who Killed Mummy,' Deadwood Productions returns to the Muskegon area with another murder mystery ‘Death on the Stage'. Join detective Lance Hamilton as he is once again called upon to solve a case involving the egos and back stabbing plots of the theatre world...before the final curtain. It's a fun, puzzling and interactive night at the theatre.
