Tonight I saw two one act plays at Modesto Junior College. Both were good, and they made a good selection with picking one dramatic and one comedic. The comedic play was one about an American woman working for the government who visited a "Mexican Lot" looking to purchase a model of mexican in order to gain some professional color for a certain political dinner. It was interesting, and twist in the end was both entertaining and unexpected. It was also the first time I have ever really sat down and felt ashamed of being a white person watching the events that were happening. I felt like I should leave, because they were bashing both white Americans and Mexicans so hard, it was starting to get a little uncomfortable.
Even still, it was the dramatic play that really made me think. It was titled "The Dutchman", and I'm not sure if that was the pen name of the person who wrote it, or the actual title, because the playbill hinted at both. There are only two scenes and both take place on a subway train in New York. The only two characters that really matter in the play are a young black man named Clay and a young white woman named Lula.
Clay is just reading on the subway when Lula forcefully makes his acquaintance, and although striking both him and the audience as obviously insane, the two strike up conversation. Lula is an attractive young woman who gives off this air of suspense. You never really know what she is going to do and say next, leading to her being flirtatious and sweet one moment to being flat out rude and angry, yelling profanities and racial slurs at the same man she intends to sleep with. During these sudden outbreaks, white-masked passengers appear, disappear, and even gradually board the same train these two are on. Lula addresses them like she knows then, and even Clay, although disregarding then initially, strikes out at them during a rampage of his own that leads to him hitting Lula.
Now I don't want to go too much into what the two say to each other, because I wouldn't feel comfortable writing it down on a public blog, but let's just say the two end up hating, yelling, and even physically hitting each other so much that Lula eventually stabs Clay with a knife, killing him. She then orders the ghost like passengers to throw him off the train, and when they do, she tells them to get off on the next stop. Once she is alone in the train, another black man comes in and sits down, to whom Lula smiles, greets, and hints at the cycle repeating itself.
It was definitely a play about race, as the whole argument was about a few racial offensive words said here and there, but I'm still confused as to the whole relationship between the white-masked passengers and Lula. I don't even really understand why she was crazy. All I know is, once the lights came up, I looked at my friend who had come to the show with me and said "what just happened?"
In other words, it was an interesting show, to say the least.
