\u200b\u2018Underground Railroad Game\u2019, which from now on I\u2019ll refer to as URG because that\u2019s the sound I made through the entire back half, is a riveting 80 minute tour of American racism on a societal level and an interpersonal level, and even though it starts off funny, it\u2019ll leave you staring hard into the floor wishing that it would swallow you whole so you don\u2019t have to think about how gross you feel from what you just witnessed and what it said about the world and people and black people and white people and America and just everything but then you get up because you want to take a shower.<\/p>\n
And boy does it start off funny. The play opens on a barn at night in the 1800s, as a scared, skittish black woman enters and ravenously eats an apple from her pocket. But when she hears a man outside, she hides in a wooden box. The man still finds her but tells her she doesn\u2019t have to be scared \u2013 he\u2019s one of the good white men, an \u2018angel\u2019 really, who will help this runaway slave escape to the north. Their acting is overly earnest and over the top, and kind of funny but we started to worry that the entire play was going to bank on this conceit holding water for more than a few minutes. Of course, just when we thought \u2018hmm is this really this play?\u2019, the lights came on in the entire theatre, jarring the audience, and the two actors came closer downstage and said to us, \u201cOkay class! What did we learn?\u201d<\/p>\n
Those two actors, Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard, are the two creators and writers of this play. And they\u2019re not playing a slave and an abolitionist \u2013 they\u2019re playing two enthusiastic teachers at Hanover Middle School, and we, the audience members, are their 7th grade students. They explain that their little skit was an introduction to their social studies unit on the Underground Railroad, in which they will combine forces as classes. We students would be separated into Union and Confederate Troops, and during the next few weeks, the Union army would try to sneak black baby dolls from one classroom\u2019s wooden box to the other\u2019s without Confederate troops catching them \u2013 our own underground railroad! To see which side we were on, we were told to look under our seats, where we all found little envelopes with little army men figurines inside. (This is when I broke my theatre rule of No Talking and whispered to Husband \u201coh so this is like REALLY interactive, huh.\u201d) Who has a blue figure? they asked, and the appropriate audience members whooped, as people do. You\u2019re the Union army! Who has a gray figure? I did, and I was told \u2018You\u2019re the Confederacy!\u2019 Instead of whooping, we all, being woke, booed, and Sheppard quickly said \u201cHey hey none of that! We support our troops!\u201d and we all died laughing.<\/p>\n
As middle school teachers, they absolutely slayed me with their pitch perfect demeanor and comments. \u201cEyes up here!\u201d they pointedly shouted at anyone who was talking to their companion or looking elsewhere. \u201cI better not see any phones kids!\u201d My favorite too-accurate thing of theirs was when the (extended) school bell would ring and they\u2019d both shout together at us: \u201cThat\u2019s not our bell! That\u2019s not our bell! Stay seated!\u201d One such moment had me laughing so hard that I made a little squeak-laugh sound after<\/em> the rest of the audience had already quieted down from their laughter. Sheppard and Kidwell both focused their attention on me like laser beams and glared me down and then Sheppard said, \u201cWe\u2019ll wait.\u201d I wanted to laugh even harder at that but true to middle school form I just turned bright red instead and wanted to vomit as everyone turned to look at me, but I also became hysterical.<\/p>\nSo I bet you are thinking this sounds just HILARIOUS and like a jolly good time, and it really was, because this was the nice little part that represented how most people learn about racism and America\u2019s racist history \u2013 they make it palatable in our schools, and easy and clean and no one gets hurt. But that way doesn\u2019t really work, because our history wasn\u2019t easy or clean and way too many people got hurt, and continue to get hurt, from the racist foundations of America. These cheerful lessons don\u2019t do much to teach kids about real racism and how it affects our society or stop them from growing up into racist adults.<\/p>\n
And so, Kidwell and Sheppard swiftly change the story\u2019s focus from these cute lessons for the kids onto their interpersonal relationship as teachers, and then as romantic partners, of two different races. At first it\u2019s funny, like in their Gene-Kelly-throwback dancing around town, or when they \u2018walk\u2019 through town making jokes about race that quickly go too far. Even though they start pushing boundaries early on, they\u2019re still boundaries we have seen before, so the discomfort is familiar.<\/p>\n
But then. Oh but then. As their relationship progresses, they can no longer gloss over the serious issues created by their different races or the history of what that difference means. Sure both of them teach about slavery but only one of them really understands it on a profound rather than academic level. As a black woman and a white man, they are going to be haunted by the master and slave relationship of their ancestors, haunted by their own lesson plan of whether they\u2019d be reaffirming or rewriting history together. They try to work out their issues in weird sexual ways that become somewhat cruel. Then the ‘somewhat’ falls by the wayside and these two incredibly brave performers start exorcising the demons of history in full-on sadomasochistic ways, playing back and forth with the master and slave roles as the stunned audience looks on and wonders whether we should go get help. The first glimpse of a stark naked Sheppard elicits gasps from the astonished audience, but then he\u2019s naked for like a good 20 minutes, as Kidwell treats him like he\u2019s on an auction block and breaks rulers on his back and chases him around with terrifying advances, culminating in him masturbating into a flag. All of it seemed real \u2013 especially, grossly, that last bit \u2013 so it was distressing, offensive, and actually appalling to watch. As I covered my face with my hands, I was flabbergasted that the adorable little middle-school-assembly show I was laughing at an hour ago had morphed into this horrifying trauma for everyone involved. But I get it. Going too far in ways we\u2019ve never really seen before in the theatre (at least mainstream theatre) let them so powerfully argue that the horrors of slavery are as relevant and real today as they were in the past, damaging people and relationships and society still. I mean I think they had to do it, at least. I\u2019m still quite traumatized.<\/p>\n
INFORMATION<\/u><\/strong> \n\u2018Underground Railroad Game\u2019 is at London\u2019s Soho Theatre until October 13th (looks like they got an extension). Tickets are pretty cheap.<\/p>\n No I didn\u2019t stage door are you kidding me I saw them naked.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u200bIt\u2019s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about the shocking American play that recently came to London\u2019s Soho Theatre. You know how art can be fucking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"yoast_head":"\n
\u201cUnderground Railroad Game\u201d: The Most Scandalizing Thing I\u2019ve Ever Seen Comes to London - Laughfrodisiac<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n