City Life | Theater

The Gamm Theatre to Address Racial Tension in Post-Performance Forums

The theatre's production of The Rant will explore race, police violence and community response

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On November 12, The Gamm Theatre will begin its production of The Rant. Written by Andrew Case, the play follows the investigation and media scrutiny surrounding the death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a Brooklyn police officer. Though initially written in 2008, this production couldn’t be anymore timely, as recent events have made us all take a long hard look at what Tony Estrella, the Gamm’s artistic director, considers “the chasm of social and economic inequities separating so-called ‘white’ and ‘black’ cultures.”

“At The Gamm, we strive to produce work that has direct relevance on the way we live,” he says. “Peter Hall, the great theatre artist and former leader of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and Britain’s National Theatre, once said that the theatre was necessary because it ‘remains the one place where society can come to hold a debate with itself.’”

In an effort to continue the debate after the curtains close, The Gamm will be holding a series of forums to discuss the issues brought up by the play. The guest speakers are writers, scholars and law enforcement officials who will be moderating topics that touch upon police/community interactions, the exchanges between young people and law enforcement and how the press and social activists respond to and report on these events.

“The forums will look to address as many angles as possible and will, of course, be driven content-wise by the expertise [and] opinions of the individual participants on each panel, as well as the makeup of the audience,” says Estrella. “The rippling influence of good conversation is underrated. Policy change at all levels is necessary. That has to happen organically from the roots up. We hope the forums can be added to the strong network of roots that have already been planted [and] are slowly but steadily making their way through the topsoil.”

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