Performing arts ~ The Race ~ Wilbury Theatre Group
"Two job-seekers from vastly different backgrounds vie for the same position in a large, faceless corporation. Each reveals uncomfortable truths from their past while dodging landmines from their competition, and dealing with an increasingly demanding disembodied interviewer. Neither candidate’s future is certain, as the audience becomes an integral part of the selection process."
On Zoom, every seat's in the front row, so when I say I had front-row tickets to this performance, it's not bragging. The play's title, The Race, refers to a competitive interview in which two men - Joseph Black and Joseph White - vie for the same job at the same time. We can see them, and they can see each other. No one can see The Interviewer (Jennifer Mischley), who sounds suspiciously like certain dispassionate female-voiced virtual assistants or grocery self-checkout prompts. Put your [employment history] on the table.
Throughout the play, the interview questions get increasingly uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. And really, really personal.
I asked playwright Mark Binder what inspired him to write about race and Zoom job interviews.
"This was a way to really deal with a lot of different issues and questions in a very sort of compressed time frame for me. It's not that I had a burning desire to write a show about a job interview. The play really started from 'what kind of theatrical work can we do inside of Zoom that will be effective?'
"I don't know if you've noticed this, but Zoom meetings can't really be more than an hour. People tend to burn out after an hour."
It does help that there's an interactive element to the play. At certain points, a poll will pop up on viewers' screens. For example: Can you set aside race in a job interview? Viewers can answer or not, it doesn't change the flow of the play.
"For me, the issue of race is kind of where it began, and how that plays a role in our society. As much as there are a lot of racial issues in this play, a lot of politics in this play, I really don't feel that the role of art is to be political. I really see this as two men who are trying to get a job in really difficult circumstances and they're using different tactics in terms of their upbringing. "
The two Josephs, White and Black, are played by men of different racial identities, Rodney Eric López, and Jim O’Brien. The actors switch roles from one performance to the next, and the play wasn't written to favor one Joseph over another.
"In the play I really do try to maintain a balance that there is no bias. Part of how we do that is switching the actors. It changes the racial balance of it," Binder says. "And this is a chance for actors who've been isolated and unable to practice their craft to be able to act with each other, and they've really enjoyed it."
I enjoyed it, too. It was engaging, a little bit of a mystery, edgy, sometimes upsetting. I liked the interactive elements. At the end, the viewers can choose who should be hired for the job. There's a brief Q&A at the end with the playwright and actors, and the results of the audience hiring poll are revealed.
The Race leans into the uncertainty of the COVID era and reliance on technology as much as how race and culture play into our preconceptions about people.
What will that mean for the play as things open up again?
"I know that we're coming to the end of this intermission in our regularly scheduled lives. I think it would be lovely to have this in high schools with the talkback period afterward," Binder said.
"This is the longest-running live play during COVID in Rhode Island, I would venture to say perhaps in the world. It was written for these circumstances and for this world in which we're living. I think it's very timely, intriguing and disturbing."
Word.
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