{"id":359549,"date":"2024-09-25T11:25:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T15:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/?p=359549"},"modified":"2024-09-25T11:25:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T15:25:37","slug":"studio-theatres-exception-to-the-rule-is-a-fierce-dissection-of-racial-uplift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/2024\/09\/25\/studio-theatres-exception-to-the-rule-is-a-fierce-dissection-of-racial-uplift\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Exception to the Rule\u2019 at Studio Theatre: a fierce dissection of racial uplift"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his 1903 essay \u201cOf the Meaning of Progress,\u201d<\/a> writer W. E. B. Du Bois recalls his experiences as a schoolteacher in rural Tennessee, drawing a sharp distinction between two types of Black students. Those who remembered slavery from their childhoods struggled with the world, and \u201csank into listless indifference, or shiftlessness, or reckless bravado.\u201d Students who didn\u2019t have those memories were eager to succeed, and Du Bois writes \u201ctheir weak wings beat against their barriers,\u2014barriers of caste, of youth, of life\u2026\u201d You can tell which group Du Bois sees as the \u201cprogress\u201d of Black America.<\/p>\n

More than a century later, this country still divides Black students into bad and good categories. But contemporary writers are blurring these boundaries, rejecting Du Bois\u2019 goal of racial uplift \u2014 the fantasy that Black Americans will gain equality by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and being successful.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Khalia Muhammad, Jacques Jean-Mary, Sabrina Lynne Sawyer, Steven Taylor Jr., and Shana Lee Hill in \u2018Exception to the Rule.\u2019 Photo by Margot Schulman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Case in point: Dave Harris\u2019 Exception to the Rule<\/em><\/a>, now showing at DC\u2019s Studio Theatre through October 27. In a harrowing 80 minutes, Harris dramatizes how racial uplift can be just another system under which all Black teens become trapped. And unlike Du Bois, Harris looks at struggling students with affection, not condescension. He dares us to enjoy<\/em> the \u201creckless bravado\u201d of teenagers who don\u2019t embody Black excellence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The show takes place in a sterile classroom \u2014 Tony Cisek\u2019s set features bare cinder-block walls with high windows, the only bright color being a tiny American flag in the corner. Over an intercom, a voice (Craig Wallace) lets us know the high school is ranking near last in its city for standardized tests. The voice also ominously warns that the school is closing for the weekend.<\/p>\n

Soon students start arriving for detention, walking in with ease and familiarity. They\u2019re a ragtag crew of familiar types. Mikayla (Khalia Muhammad) is the confident girl with an unintentionally grating voice; Tommy (Steven Taylor Jr.) is the slightly nerdy kid trying to be cool; Dayrin (Jacques Jean-Mary) is the smooth talker with fuckboy energy; Dasani (Shana Lee Hill) is the warm girl trying to mind her own business; Abdul (Khouri St.Surin) is the resentful guy prone to fights.<\/p>\n

The final person to enter detention is Erika (Sabrina Lynne Sawyer), much to the shock of her classmates. Erika is the goody-two-shoes, the one student deemed \u201ccollege-bound\u201d by the community. She\u2019s confident in her smarts, but is mostly just disturbed by her classmates, who seem to embody all of the harmful inner-city stereotypes she\u2019s trying to transcend: they\u2019re loud and obnoxious and mean and unbothered. \u201cI thought detention was quiet,\u201d Erika states. \u201cA place where everyone remembers the mistakes that got them here and then learns how to not make the same mistakes again.\u201d The other kids immediately burst into laughter. They know where they are, and they have little reason to believe in their own redemption.<\/p>\n

The bottle-episode premise for Exception to the Rule <\/em>allows for escalating dramas and chill hangouts. The whole show follows suit, becoming a study in contrasts: rule followers vs. rule breakers, assimilation vs. defiance, escaping home vs. staying home. What\u2019s significant is what\u2019s not <\/em>staged. There are no white authority figures to rail against. Nor are there Black mother surrogates (\u00e0 la Sister Mary Clarence<\/a> or Mary Lamb<\/a>) to step in and set these \u201ctroubled teens\u201d on \u201cthe right path.\u201d The teens are left to their own devices, and still end up reinforcing the damage of the world onto each other.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Shana Lee Hill, Jacques Jean-Mary, Khalia Muhammad, Sabrina Lynne Sawyer, and Steven Taylor Jr. in \u2018Exception to the Rule.\u2019 Photo by Margot Schulman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Director Miranda Haymon (who also directed the play\u2019s 2022 off-Broadway debut<\/a> at Roundabout Theatre Company) does an excellent job balancing the show\u2019s allegorical touches with high school mundanity. We sense that as much as these characters are familiar types, they\u2019re also performing <\/em>these roles to impress each other. Khalia Muhammad is particularly good at bending her voice and physicality to ingratiating effect.<\/p>\n

Despite these exaggerations, there\u2019s immense loneliness. The stage has an archipelago of desks, where marooned characters pass time to survive. Haymon lets the actors apply lip gloss, comb hair, listen to music, read books, and play games. The action is engrossing \u2014 so much so that it steals focus from speaking characters. I wondered if the show would benefit from having less dialogue (and plot) to get through.<\/p>\n

Still, dialogue is the primary tool Harris uses to build provocations around identity. The ensemble of Exception to the Rule <\/em>delivers many monologues, skillfully blending cruelty with entertainment. The real showcase is for Sabrina Lynne Sawyer\u2019s Erika, whose awkwardness transforms into ferocity. Sawyer delivers a torrent of speeches revealing the burden of exceptionality, her own superiority complex, and the terrifying ways she\u2019s placed her Blackness and sexuality as incommensurable with her personhood.<\/p>\n

The rest of the production doesn\u2019t land with the impact of Erika\u2019s words. The references to aspirational Black celebrities feel more attuned to millennials than to Gen Z. And I was curious whether my tiredness watching the show was because of sometimes sluggish pacing, or if my body was reacting to the setting\u2019s brutality.<\/p>\n

I also question if the show\u2019s making points some audiences of color already understand. In some ways, it\u2019s easy now to critique Du Bois\u2019 racial uplift. The post-Obama world is proof that \u201cBlack faces in high places\u201d don\u2019t help most Americans. And just ask anyone who\u2019s gone through \u201cgifted and talented\u201d education programs \u2014 they\u2019ll tell you<\/a> it\u2019s an isolating and dangerous game, to tell kids they\u2019re better than their own neighbors, families, and friends.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Shana Lee Hill, Khalia Muhammad, Jacques Jean-Mary, Sabrina Lynne Sawyer, Khouri St.Surin, and Steven Taylor Jr. in \u2018Exception to the Rule.\u2019 Photo by Margot Schulman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet with this show, Harris pushes beyond a critique of racial uplift, into a celebration of the Black culture that\u2019s typically derided. Harris once described<\/a> Exception to the Rule <\/em>as \u201ckind of a hood-ass play,\u201d and the show delights in bawdiness and lewdness. The audience I saw the show with was mostly white with a few people of color (including myself) sprinkled in. There seemed to be a hesitation among us on how to enjoy the show. Were we allowed to laugh at this?<\/p>\n

I found the audience\u2019s attitude frustrating. Politeness is the enemy of both comedy and drama, and politeness clipped laughter at ridiculously funny lines. In some ways, the audience\u2019s paranoid politeness was just another way that characters onstage were being policed into certain \u201cacceptable\u201d behavior. I wish we allowed ourselves to enjoy the play without hesitation. Harris understands there\u2019s nothing wrong with people \u2014 or a show \u2014 being \u201chood.\u201d<\/p>\n

After watching Exception to the Rule <\/em>I\u2019m still left asking, \u201cWhy don\u2019t the characters just leave<\/em>?\u201d The students keep waiting for the teacher Mr. Bernie, who, similar to Godot<\/a>, remains elusive to the point of absurdity. But the characters seem resigned to their metaphorical (and literal) cage. Without staging it too explicitly, Haymon and Harris\u2019 classroom flickers with the surreal. Like Get Out<\/em><\/a>\u2019s sunken place or I Saw the TV Glow<\/em><\/a>\u2019s midnight realm, it\u2019s a dissociative, adolescent purgatory.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded, strangely, of the closing of that 1903 Du Bois essay. He returns to Tennessee to discover that the divide between the \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d Black students didn\u2019t matter: all his students never escaped generational poverty, and promising students died at a young age. \u201cHow hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real!\u201d Du Bois writes. \u201cAnd all this life and love and strife and failure,\u2014is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a way of reading Du Bois\u2019 words as a call to action: we must push forward into the sunlight, achieve more, and make progress a reality. But with Exception to the Rule<\/em>, Harris lets us linger in a delirious paralysis between day and night, past and future, disgust and aspiration. Harris doesn\u2019t cast judgment on those who can\u2019t leave that space. It\u2019s similar to the end of Exception to the Rule<\/em>, when the classroom becomes truly quiet. It\u2019s what Erika always wanted, but within that silence, there\u2019s unheard agony.<\/p>\n

Running Time: Approximately 80 minutes with no intermission.<\/span><\/p>\n

Exception to the Rule<\/i><\/b><\/a> plays through October 27, 2024, in the Mead Theatre at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th Street NW, Washington, DC. For tickets ($42\u2013$93, with <\/span>low-cost options and discounts<\/span><\/a> available), go <\/span>online<\/b><\/a> or call the box office at 202-332-3300.<\/span><\/p>\n

The program for <\/span>Exception to the Rule<\/i> is online <\/span>here.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

COVID Safety:<\/b> All performances are mask recommended. Studio Theatre\u2019s complete Health and Safety protocols are <\/span>here.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a challenging but rewarding show about students stuck in detention, playwright Dave Harris questions which Black Americans are allowed to succeed. 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