WHITEFACE by
(Play in development)
Claire and John are in their 60s, a happy interracial couple for the past 15 years. They’re partners, but now reality has gone tilt. One moment they’re singing an old Irving Berlin song together, and the next Claire is teaching a class where nothing goes right. Her slideshow of iconic civil rights pictures includes an image of three girls dressed up for Halloween, two of them in...
Claire and John are in their 60s, a happy interracial couple for the past 15 years. They’re partners, but now reality has gone tilt. One moment they’re singing an old Irving Berlin song together, and the next Claire is teaching a class where nothing goes right. Her slideshow of iconic civil rights pictures includes an image of three girls dressed up for Halloween, two of them in...
(Play in development)
Claire and John are in their 60s, a happy interracial couple for the past 15 years. They’re partners, but now reality has gone tilt. One moment they’re singing an old Irving Berlin song together, and the next Claire is teaching a class where nothing goes right. Her slideshow of iconic civil rights pictures includes an image of three girls dressed up for Halloween, two of them in blackface. Claire recognizes her smiling teenaged self as the third girl, a white hobo with a cigar. Next stop, a Dark Wood like Dante’s. Her guide Eleanor, a black teenager from 1962, comes through the wood looking for her dog but also bringing Claire’s high school uniform and a desire to talk about old times.
Eleanor doesn’t judge, but everyone else Claire meets in the Dark Wood finds fault with her. And they adopt strange disguises, like her daughter and son-in-law who masquerade as those two friends from the photo and continue to blame Claire for opting out of blackface when she had, after all, promised. John’s granddaughter Shanna badgers her to sign a mysterious petition and blames Claire for inaction. John himself is heading the school’s inquiry into the botched slideshow; Claire fears losing not just her job, but John, who’s lost all recollection of their shared life.
The final reckoning comes with the appearance of the souls of the damned—or one of them. Claire takes the only step open to her if she is to emerge whole. And, in a very wobbly way, it works. Eleanor finds her dog and John and Claire reunite to sing Irving Berlin. But they don’t get far before the Dark Wood springs its last surprise, the reason Claire’s world went tilt in the first place. Her return to reality is rocky, but with clear signs of hope.
Claire and John are in their 60s, a happy interracial couple for the past 15 years. They’re partners, but now reality has gone tilt. One moment they’re singing an old Irving Berlin song together, and the next Claire is teaching a class where nothing goes right. Her slideshow of iconic civil rights pictures includes an image of three girls dressed up for Halloween, two of them in blackface. Claire recognizes her smiling teenaged self as the third girl, a white hobo with a cigar. Next stop, a Dark Wood like Dante’s. Her guide Eleanor, a black teenager from 1962, comes through the wood looking for her dog but also bringing Claire’s high school uniform and a desire to talk about old times.
Eleanor doesn’t judge, but everyone else Claire meets in the Dark Wood finds fault with her. And they adopt strange disguises, like her daughter and son-in-law who masquerade as those two friends from the photo and continue to blame Claire for opting out of blackface when she had, after all, promised. John’s granddaughter Shanna badgers her to sign a mysterious petition and blames Claire for inaction. John himself is heading the school’s inquiry into the botched slideshow; Claire fears losing not just her job, but John, who’s lost all recollection of their shared life.
The final reckoning comes with the appearance of the souls of the damned—or one of them. Claire takes the only step open to her if she is to emerge whole. And, in a very wobbly way, it works. Eleanor finds her dog and John and Claire reunite to sing Irving Berlin. But they don’t get far before the Dark Wood springs its last surprise, the reason Claire’s world went tilt in the first place. Her return to reality is rocky, but with clear signs of hope.