Bryant, played by theatre junior Gary Patterson, talks with his girlfriend Fiona, played by theatre junior Christi Thibodeau during "Baltimore," a play put on by the MSU Theatre Department on Oct. 6, 2015 in the Auditorium. The 90 minute production tells the story of a group of college students who confront their own perceptions of race when a student draws a racist picture on another student's door.
For the past week, the play Baltimore by Kristen Greenidge was performed at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts.
The play follows college freshmen, as they have to take on the issue of blatant racism after a racial drawing is written on someone’s whiteboard. The name of the play comes from a poem written by Countee Cullen called Incident, which discusses Baltimore in the context of racism.
Graduate student Kristy Allen portrays Dean Hernandez said she thinks the play is important because it opens up dialogue on the topic of racism.
“Regardless of what people feel like about the incident that is portrayed in the play, it leaves the audience with at least the idea that they should be able to have a conversation about race,” Allen said.
The topic of Baltimore is similar to racially charged occurrences that have happened on MSU’s campus in previous years.
Joni Starr, the director of Baltimore and an instructor in the Department of Teacher Education said it's important to talk about and listen to what others have to say about the issue.
“If we’re not talking about how that makes people feel and helping people understand why that’s an inappropriate action, whether it be somebody writing on their board or shooting somebody," Starr said. "It’s how we learn to communicate, speaking and listening to each other.”
MSU has been the first to premiere this production. This play is a part of the Big Ten Theatre Consortium, which is a series of plays written by women and addresses the under representation of women in college theatre.
This initiative is important because most theater departments in the Big Ten consist of mostly women, but most roles are written for men.
The University of Maryland has partnered with Greenidge because of the location of the play, but since MSU isn’t partnered they had room to make a production more of their own.
The overall production of the play started in the spring and one of the most noticeable things in the play was the set design and the media.
“We went around a lot with the design team and myself and we talked about “do we really see (the drawing)” what would be the impact on the audience if we didn’t put anything and just left it to the imagination,” Starr said.
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