Reviewing the Revival of John Guare's 'Six Degrees of Separation' on Broadway in the Midst of Teaching It for the First Time - Entrepreneur Generations

This year, we shifted Part III of the IB Curriculum to Drama, a move primarily made to lighten the reading load of students, who start the four texts at the end of January and must finish them by the end of April. Reading four novels in three months -- with many interruptions, including spring break but often snow days -- can be challenging for students already suffering from senioritis. While I don't mind a good challenge for myself or my students, it was worth an experiment of trying Drama out; plus, envisioning seniors doing fun acting/filming projects with these plays as the year ticked away was appealing because I thought they would find it fun.

We started in January with Richard III, probably my favorite Shakespeare play to teach (others, probably in this order: King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Othello); after we read it, we had the opportunity to see it at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. Next we moved on to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which was one of my least favorite pieces of literature to teach in my career; even though I liked the concept, it was painful for me to read, a fact that I ascribe partially to my only cursory knowledge of Hamlet (I've never taught it, so my knowledge of it is just reading it rushed in college and a few times seeing it) and partially to my frustration with its unlikable characters and inability to follow the story/conversations.  I strained to finish and struggled to teach it. The next play, however, was Suzan-Lori Parks' wondrous Father Comes Home from the Wars, which was a beautiful and brilliant read and a phenomenal play to teach.

The last play for our students is John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, which I chose because I had fond memories of reading the play in college -- and watching the 1993 Fred Schepisi film starring Stockard Channing and Will Smith -- in my Film & Literature class, taught by the great Bill Vincent (who taught Sam Raimi, and told so many awesome stories of being on the set and in the movies The Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, For Love of the Game and The Quick and the Dead and such). Professor Vincent had us discuss the merits of the play and then watch the film twice (once for entertainment, and once for analysis, he would always say) and discuss its implications; the class discussions were tremendous.

The set, with the rotating Kandinsky up top.

Beyond the fond memories, the play had the natural hook of that Will Smith movie, plus featured examination of race and class from a different perspective than we are used to. Our curriculum has eight books including summer reading, and four of them are by black writers -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Suzan-Lori Parks. Largely, these have been the favorite books of the curriculum this year, and all have examined race from a black perspective. Seeing race and racism examined from the Irish American's perspective, I thought, might offer the kids some interesting contrasts. The play is also a biting satire of upper class white liberals, as well as an indictment of the American Dream, and I thought the students would be able to delve into these aspects as well. Additionally, Six Degrees of Separation is fast and funny and, in the version we have, just tallies up to about 60 pages of text.

Three teachers on spring break needing out! 

I wasn't certain if the kids were going to love it or hate it, though. It could be argued that the "Paul" character is kind of a Magical Negro character, a black character who, Spike Lee argues, enters the lives of white people to help the white people find meaning. However, I would argue that Paul has many more layers than almost all the other characters in the play, and moves beyond his role as this sort of stock character.


We read the play in about a week in class, going back and forth between reading it aloud, watching clips of the film, and discussion. Everyday, class felt engaging, and, largely, the students liked it too. Even on Senior Skip day, when I had less than ten students per class, I was able to engage them even as they were begging me to just give them a break because at least they showed up. Nope - on this day and others, their discussions about Six Degrees of Separation were lively and thoughtful, and the in-class acting -- especially during the hilarious scene involving all the kids -- was perfect. Part of it is simply Guare's play, which is a fine piece of literature, vacillating between humor and pathos, with an interesting structure that begins in media res and then leads into a 20-page flashback which picks up with the same language as at the start. The themes -- of interconnectedness, race, class, family -- are rich and timeless, even with the play's setting being squarely at the end of the Reagan era (complete with references to Gorbachev) and in Manhattan (the characters are clearly well-versed in the theater scene, for example, and there are a couple of other NYC allusions).

Students enjoyed talking about the concept of "Six Degrees of Separation" and debating what made Paul the way he was. And we have to give Guare credit for lampooning "white people problems" twenty-five years before today's world made that a popular concept; these are characters who, as one student said, "they think they're 'woke' but they're disconnected and ignorant." Another student said Guare's point was to show that even these kind white liberals can be racist, when her classmate retorted, "especially the kind white liberals can be racist."

I wish we had more time to delve into the American Dream critique that the play examines. Paul, it seems to me, is a Jay Gatsby-type of character, but updated with race. His desire to be the Kittredges represents the fallibility of the American Dream -- no matter how smart and talented Paul is, he's going to be eaten up by the system, even if he gives up his identity -- and this futility forces him into a world of delusion. But it seems like Guare's point is that the rich white people are living in their own sort of delusion, as well, that it's only through connection with others that we can be rattled free of it.

All that, plus students laughed out loud at some of the lines? Yup, it was a good play to teach.

Super friendly Corey Hawkins and Allison Janney signing.

We didn't learn about fact that the play was getting a revival on Broadway until midway through the school year. Starring Allison Janney and Corey Hawkins, we immediately thought it would be fun to try to bring students; however, with just 8.5 days of instruction before IB exams left after spring break and the play not opening in previews until April 5 (and spring break after this), it wasn't feasible (even if the cost of tickets and parking were doable, which they really aren't).

My friend and colleague was able to get tickets for us to see the Six Degrees of Separation matinee during our spring break, on April 12. I was so pumped. Who doesn't love Allison Janney? Ever since she played that horny guidance counselor on Ten Things I Hate About You, I have, and then she starred in one of my favorite TV shows ever, The West Wing. I didn't really know the other two leads -- Corey Hawkins or John Benjamin Hickey -- but both have a familiar face.

All that is great, but to see a play on Broadway while you're teaching it was the aspect I was most excited about. What insights would I gain into the piece of literature that I didn't have already? How can I bring ideas I learned back to my students?

overheard: "Can you be our White House press secretary now?"

The answer, of course, was plenty. The revival was magical. Guare's play doesn't have any breaks for acts or scenes, and I was wondering how that would work seeing it live, and the answer is simple: there are no breaks. This is a 90-minute play without an intermission and no discernible pauses in the action. It was fast and funny, but the jokes disarmed me and made the richness of the ideas and emotions more palpable. I laughed through much of it, but found the tears leapt to my eyes quickly as well.

Most of that is due to Corey Hawkins, who was a revelation as Paul, the young black man who poses as Sidney Poitier's son. My only exposure to a portrayal of Paul previously was Will Smith, who starred in the 1993 film version. I found Smith's performance to be solid but unremarkable: an actor who, at the time, was admirably pushing himself out of his comfort zones, and is able to do the charming aspects of Paul, but once asked to plum the depths of what is making Paul tick, is unable to dig deep enough. His performance works in the lengthy opening scene and the long Catcher in the Rye monologue, but less so in his scenes with Anthony Michael Hall (Smith's refusal to do a gay kiss, which he later said he regretted, doesn't help... the replacement kiss, done with trick photography, is very artificial looking) or in his final conversation with Ouisa, in which it felt Paul was simply delusional, nothing else.

Corey Hawkins was super friendly.

Hawkins, on the other hand, got stronger as the drama wore on. His scenes with the Kittredges early in the play are dynamic, but it's when the play asks him to shift into a Sidney Poitier impersonation monologue (which isn't in the film) where I realized that this young man had range. Hawkins' scenes with a gay prostitute (James Cusati-Moyer, who goes full frontal nude) and Chris Perfetti (as the weaselly Trent) towards the middle are sexy and convincing. But it's in the conclusion of the play where Hawkins had me in tears as Paul desperately tries to immerse himself into the Kittredge family. In Hawkins' performance, Paul's delusions are a result of a manic personality who, despite charm and intelligence, is constantly thwarted in life and desire. It is only through imagination that he can escape. On page, my students were left asking themselves why Paul's sudden shift of character, why he seems so deluded at the end. Smith's performance does the same. In Hawkins' performance, however, a few physical and verbal tics early in the play are ramped up in a way that is totally believable and resonant at the conclusion. The final conversation between he and Ouisa just throttled me, leaving me gasping.

Allison Janney is an actress I love, but she unfortunately has the specter of Stockard Channing's performance as Ouisa Kittredge in her portrayal here. Channing originated the part on Broadway and then was Oscar-nominated for the part in the film version, and the reason is clear: she is able to add gravitas to the role (at least in the film version... I never saw her on Broadway) that Janney doesn't quite get to on the day I saw her, which was just a week into the performance. I wanted her to make her connection with Paul more palpable, as well as her character's own existential crisis. Janney is certainly snappy and funny in the part, but there were times I wanted her to slow down and add a bit more weight to the lines and she and Paul's relationship. Still, I enjoyed her and she was awesome to talk to after the show.

The last standout of the cast for me was Colby Minifie as Tess, the ornery and ignored daughter of the Kittredges. The children in the play are written broadly and played even more broadly, and I don't mean that in a bad way: these are one-note, symbolic characters and their portrayal leads to the play's funniest scene, where all the rich kids are hurling insults and whines at their rich parents. Minifie's over-the-top performance was a big part of that.

The set is minimalist, with Guare's stage directions -- the rotating Kandinsky at top, the post-Reagan era furniture design -- followed closely. The actors engage with the audience just as Guare describes. The production didn't favor any flourishes except for a large translucent screen, behind which the audience could see silhouettes; this is how, for example, Paul's sex scene with the prostitute is staged and how the cityscape is portrayed.

All in all, the production proved that Six Degrees of Separation -- a play that was uniquely of its time, with its Reagan-era greed and black/white issues somewhat on the back burner (this is pre-Rodney King), but also ahead of its time, with its ridicule of upper-class white liberals -- was a play that was ripe for revival. At turns both hilarious and poignant, it revels in its characters of Paul and Ouisa, and in the interdependence that we have on others, if we open ourselves to find them.

I talked with Mr. Hawkins after the show about teaching the play to students in Baltimore and he was really friendly, sharing that he's from the area. He's from D.C. and went to school at Juilliard. 

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2oGAO5c Reviewing the Revival of John Guare's 'Six Degrees of Separation' on Broadway in the Midst of Teaching It for the First Time - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet