Staff Pick
Claudia Rankine does great things and so naturally, this play is impeccable. It begins with a dinner party that is a minefield of micro- and macroaggressions and ends with a reckoning: a challenge to examine race on a more nuanced level. The White Card is a stunning demonstration of the undeniable bigotry of the conspicuously woke and a necessary reminder that America’s ongoing racist legacy is upheld by well-meaning white liberals. Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A play about the imagined fault line between black and white lives by Claudia Rankine, the author of Citizen
The White Card stages a conversation that is both informed and derailed by the black/white American drama. The scenes in this one-act play, for all the characters' disagreements, stalemates, and seeming impasses, explore what happens if one is willing to stay in the room when it is painful to bear the pressure to listen and the obligation to respond.
--from the introduction by Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine's first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible?
Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles's intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist's studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what--and who--is actually on display.
Rankine's The White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself.