A Black man named Clay rides the subway alone late at night. He is approached by Lula, a young white woman who seems to know everything about him. As the two travel through the night, Lula's charged conversation with Clay slowly reveals a troubling undercurrent to their meeting. Suddenly, Clay’s perilous existence as a Black man in a white-dominated society becomes impossible to ignore.

 

In examining this seminal work in a 2019 context, we see the ways “small doses” of microagressions, forgiven in a culture of cancellation, allows for the slow seeping in of blatant and violent racism. With a sense of constant uneasiness and danger in a space that should be fully public and accessible slowly turns white-dominated and private, this production of Dutchman asked questions about Black masculinity, comments that ring even more offensive in today’s culture, and observing a horror in a public space while having a phone to escape into, especially when so many tragedies are already at our fingertips and in our neighborhoods. When does ignoring a horror turn into being responsible for it?

​

by Amiri Baraka

 

Director & Choreographer: Ryan Dobrin
Lead Producer: Henry Lombino
Associate Producers: Those Guilty Creatures (Ryan Dobrin & Carina Goebelbecker) and Keyonne Session

Production Stage Manager: Emily Bubeck
Costume & Set Design: Tekla Monson
Light Design: Zack Lobel
Sound Design: Connor Wang
Props Design: Emily Zimmerman
Dramaturgy: Bisa McDuffie-Thurmond
Fight Choreography: Carina Goebelbecker
Marketing Director: Kimberly Sears

Consulting Producer: Cynthia Tong

 

Ensemble: Xander Browne, Tim Creavin, Zora Iman Crews, Sierra Berkeley Fisher, Hope French, Carina Goebelbecker, Keyonne Session

​

Photos by Rafael X