An Event. By Chisa Hutchinson
Working Theater | Five Boroughs One City | 2015-present
Livestreaming Conversation About Community Engagement and Theatremaking in Community for Working Theater’s Five Boroughs/One City Project—Sun, May 10 --on HowlRound TV.
The Five Boroughs | One City Project launched in the fall of 2014 with commissions of 5 teams of writers, directors and installation artists, supported by designers, dramaturgs and community liaisons. Each team’s goal is to create a piece of theatre rooted in a neighborhood in each of the 5 boroughs of New York by engaging a specific community as both source and resource in the creative process. The work being created is for, inspired by and in response to each community.
STATEN ISLAND
Playwright Chisa Hutchinson and director Kristin Horton with the help of dramaturg Theresa M. Davis developed an interactive event called "Breaking Bread" that explores family, community and food on Staten Island. Developmental workshops have been presented at the Abingdon Theater (May 2015) and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island (March 2015; February 2016).
"Breaking Bread" invites the audience to an intimate dinner with an Italian-American family during which the daughter arrives with her African American boyfriend, but in a formal twist the Italian Americans are played by African American actors and the African American boyfriend is played by an Italian American actor. The play is designed to disrupt racial perceptions and stereotypes and to generate dialogue between communities in Staten Island which are deeply segregated by race, political positioning, and economic background. The Staten Island Expressway dividing the North and South shores of the island is referred to by local residents as the Mason-Dixon Line. Each Staten Island performance of Breaking Bread will be hosted by a local resident or business who will act as cultural ambassadors for the audience. The inclusion of an actual catered Italian dinner for the audience and the cast as part of the action of the play will also aid in fostering a welcoming and hospitable atmosphere which we hope will encourage participation in a potentially charged dialogue following each performance.
Conceived in the wake of the death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner and the grand jury decision to not indict officer Pantaleo, the project aims to foster an open conversation about racial perceptions and stereotypes. It is further intended to build social and cultural bridges between two disparate communities of working people - in Staten Island: the primarily Caucasian blue collar Irish and Italian American communities on the south shore and the more racially diverse populations on the north shore. In both content and form, Breaking Bread is designed to disrupt inherited notions of social and cultural hierarchy. The reverse race casting challenges the viewers to consider (or reconsider) preconceptions of racial and cultural stereotypes. And in the play itself each character embodies in complicated ways some aspect of American society’s conflicting narratives of racial equality and white privilege.
Abingdon Cast:
Celia | Robbie McCauley
Gio | Arthur French
Vince | Nathan Hinton
Angela | Shauna Miles
Nicole | Ngozi Anyanwu
Sabur | Benjamin L. Myers
Design Consultant | Deb O
Photos by Tuda Sarian