Preview of Rasheeda Speaking, Collective Consciousness Theatre
Collective Consciousness Theatre returns tonight with its second show of the season: Joel Drake Johnson’s comedy-thriller Rasheeda Speaking, which runs Thursday through Saturday for the next three weekends: January 17th-19th, January 24th-26th, and February 1st-3rd, at Erector Square in New Haven, at 8 p.m.
The play was a success Off-Broadway, directed by Cynthia Nixon, with Dianne Wiest and Tonya Pinkins in the main roles of Ileen and Jaclyn, two office assistants working for a surgeon who manages to poison their working relationship. Collective Consciousness Theatre (CCT) is a “community-based theatre dedicated to social change” and calls Rasheeda Speaking “an incisive and shocking dark comedy” that “examines the realities of so-called ‘post-racial’ society.” The production features Susan Kulp, of New Haven Theater Company, as Ileen and, as Jaclyn, Gracy Brown who has appeared in Elm Shakespeare productions in Edgerton Park, most recently Love Labour’s Lost.
Jaclyn (Gracy Brown), Ileen (Susan Kulp), photo courtesy of Collective Consciousness Theatre
Those who saw the first show of CCT’s season, the tense and expansive, character-driven drama Jesus Hopped the A Train will find a surprising transformation in the theater at Erector Square. Gone is any sign of the twin outdoor penitentiary cells of that show’s set. The wizards of CCT—set-designer David Sepulveda and lighting designer Jamie Burnett—have created the bland, placid space of a doctor’s office, complete with wall-paintings I swear I’ve seen on the walls at Yale-New Haven. The space is realistic enough to make you check if you’ve brought your insurance card.
That level of realism is important to this show, which enacts the kind of office shenanigans that have become very familiar from shows like The Office (in both its British and American versions). As Artistic Director Dexter J. Singleton put it, the aim is to be “as professional as possible on a shoestring budget.” In terms of set, the goal has been achieved. And, in light of the previous show at CCT, the set might make you consider if this modern workplace, its twin big desks in an L, is really so different from a prison yard’s adjacent cells.
At the dress rehearsal I attended, the production’s director Elizabeth Nearing, Long Wharf Theatre’s Community Engagement Manager, spoke of the play as geared to address “the indignities of the office place,” particularly the “microaggressions” that soon become their own rationale. The play runs without intermission for about 100 minutes, taking us through four days in which tensions between Ileen and Jaclyn begin and run their harrowing course.
At the beginning of day one, Dr. Williams (Ethan Warner-Crane) confers with Ileen, who he has just made office manager, about her co-worker. Jaclyn has been out on sick leave for five days and is due back that morning. Williams, who’s a bit timid, a surgeon who might not be at his best managing staff, takes the opportunity to let Ileen know that he needs some documentation of dereliction of duty on Jaclyn’s part so that he can convince HR to transfer her elsewhere. He has a great candidate in mind for her job and Jaclyn, he insists, doesn’t really “fit in.” Ileen tries to shrug off his complaints by taking her co-worker’s part, but eventually she’s on his page, cautioned that they must avoid any playing of “the race card.” So, before Jaclyn arrives, we’ve got an “us against them” workplace that could become incendiary. Jaclyn, we soon see, is a no-nonsense type with more than a few complaints of her own—the toxins in the office, the fact that Ileen has neglected the office’s many plants (needed to help with those toxins), and that Ileen—whose desk is something of a mess—has managed to let her work spread to Jaclyn’s desk. The two keep up banter and friendly jousts, but we’re ready to see this get ugly.
For costume designer Carol Koumbaros, who has been with CCT since the production of Topdog/Underdog, the show’s lack of intermission presents an interesting challenge. Ileen and Jaclyn barely leave the stage and yet we have to be given a sense of four distinct days. She has achieved this in subtle differences to basic “uniformlike” outfits, which, she noticed, tend to be the norm at medical offices these days. Indeed, to all appearances—including the sliding window outside of which patient Rose (Debra Walsh) impatiently demands attention—this is a place of tranquil calm. Like most workplaces, appearances can be deceiving. Mismanagement—or what Shakespeare called “misrule”—is the order of our day and here it sets up a heap of ammunition and then sets fire to it.
Who and what will carry the day? The collusion between Ileen and Dr. Williams, or Jaclyn’s self-defense? Head on over to Erector Square one of the next three weekends to find out.
Rasheeda Speaking
By Joel Drake Johnson
Directed by Elizabeth Nearing
Collective Consciousness Theatre
January 17-19, January 24-26, February 1-3, 2019
Erector Square
Building 6 West, 2nd floor, Studio D
319 Peck Street
New Haven
Tickets are $25 Adults, $10 students and available for all performances at: collectiveconsciousnesstheatre.org.