Next Act's "Pipeline" is a Complex Look at Racism, Education, and Family
Photo by Lily Shea.
Nya can’t breathe. It is as if the world she has carefully created, the one she worked towards and fought for, is closing in on her. Her marriage, her career as a teacher, her son’s safety, his academic and professional success, everything is folding in on Nya. And with each dramatic setback, the panic attacks begin. In Dominique Morisseau’s poetic, heart-wrenching portrait of one Black mother trying to keep her teenage son out of the “pipeline” from school to prison, the chances of Nya breathing easily again are small. And for the other characters, the chance of escaping the inertia of failure also seems very small indeed.
Directed by Jamil A. C. Mangan, Next Act Theatre’s production of Pipeline does a good job of shining a light on the problems at the heart of the play; racism, broken school systems, fraught family and work dynamics, and the rage that wells up when one is denied a voice. And the cast is universally strong, populating Morisseau’s gorgeous, complex play with equally complex characters. Unfortunately Mangan orchestrates a feel-good ending that doesn’t do justice to the script, or the important subject matter it addresses.
From Nya’s opening moments onstage, nervously leaving a voicemail message for her ex-husband, Kristin E. Ellis fills the space with nervous unease, quickly escalating into panicky fear that wine and bummed cigarettes cannot assuage. Throughout the play we see her switching masks to navigate each challenging situation. Her enthusiastic teacher face and voice leads her English class through a Gwendolyn Brooks poem that terrifies her. In Nya’s negotiations with her son’s girlfriend Jasmine, she toggles between friend, mom, confidante, and chess master until she gets the information she needs. The cool, confident, independent woman mask she wears with her ex-husband and her ex-boyfriend slips a bit at times, while the “just say the right things” submissive and reassuring countenance helps her confront the leadership at her son’s school, when she is pleading for his extrication from the situation that got him expelled. With each transition, we see a fierce mother who is exhausted from trying to keep her son safe in a world that would condemn him on sight and eat him alive.
Photo by Lily Shea.
As her son Omari, Ibraheem Farmer is extraordinary. Walking the fine line between reactive adolescent and self-assured adult, he is the good kid who is in over his head, advocating for his independence but unable to manage his anger. His vulnerability, disappointment, and naivete are heartbreaking as he tries to sort out his changing relationships with his parents, particularly his frustrated father, Xavier (a stern Will Sims II). Omari’s girlfriend Jasmine is played with strength and confidence by Malaina Moore, who proves herself to be a formidable adversary in an argument. But her calm, forceful maturity doesn’t always square with the silly teen impulses embedded in her lines. More differentiation of the generation gap between the teens and their parents and teachers would have been helpful for both of these characters.
As Laurie, the seen-it-all, old school teacher who is caring and cynical in equal measure, Tami Workentin is a force of nature. Her machine-gun paced monologues and tell-it-like-it-is attitude cover up a devotion to teaching that brings her back to school, even after being injured in an altercation with a parent. Laurie rarely offers appropriate advice for Nya, but that’s not because she doesn’t care. The aftermath of her final confrontation with two students is truly heartbreaking. Also present in the teachers’ lounge is security guard Dun (James Carrington), who brings a lot of attitude and style to the underpaid, undervalued job. Carrington shines in this character part, which is completely new territory, compared to roles he’s undertaken on area stages. His measured conversations with both Nya and Xavier are masterful studies in subtext.
Photo by Lily Shea.
The spare set, designed jointly by director Mangan and Next Act’s Artistic Director David Cecsarini, features a generic table and a few chairs in the square playing space, in front of an ominous closed door and a distant American flag, frequently bathed in fog. At the sides of the proscenium are two large panels for video projections (created by Chiké Johnson), allowing the audience to follow along easily as the production quickly pivots between an inner city public high school classroom, the teacher’s lounge, an elite, college prep boarding school, Nya’s modest home, and a hospital waiting room. Footage of high school students noisily changing classes while wearing masks places the story squarely in the present.
The video panels also allow the audience to focus on one of Nya’s lessons in her English class, featuring the Gwendolyn Brooks poem, “We Real Cool,” which becomes a haunting refrain in the play. The poem describes young Black men skipping school to hang out a pool hall, flexing their teenage rebellion temporarily, knowing they will likely be dead soon. Not only is the subject matter frightening and relevant to the moment in the play, the way the poem was misunderstood by its white publishers underlines the chronic failures of communication that complicate the story.
While this set is clear, flexible, and utilitarian, Mangan’s blocking and other stage effects are less discernable. A constant fog hangs over the action of the play, regardless of the location, and actors seem to be glued to the four points of the square stage area, except when they are in conflict, in the middle. Audiences are left to speculate on the meaning behind the stylized staging. The vocal effects for Omari’s recitations of “We Real Cool” also seem heavy-handed. And while the final scene of the play is meant to offer hope of reconciliation between Omari and Nya, under Mangan’s direction it tries to fix all of the conflicts, by simply offering the young man a voice. There’s no doubt that listening to Omari is a good start in addressing the inequities contained in the play, but it’s unrealistic to believe that it also ends the myriad problems faced by young black men like him.