Help by Claudia Rankine @ the SHED
When transitional space set the tone for emotional alienation
Help, a play by Claudia Rankine at the Shed is a nuanced biographical account of her encounters and conversation with white privilege men in airport lounges, terminals and 35000 feet in the air. Describing micro-aggression, white fragility, privilege and the delusion of meritocracy within the American Dream. The play is set through a chorus of generic white men, an African American woman (Roslyn Ruff) and a stage reminiscing in turn to airport terminals and plane through a series of choreographed ergonomic rolling desk chairs.
The main notion that emanates from the play was the idea of belonging. How can a person of color belong to space that excluded them as second class citizens. The interesting part is that her conversation browses along with different subjects that see people of color in America as Charity cases rather than successful members of society. The depicted imaginaries are never too far off from the plantation workers, the illegal worker from the south and the war refugee all favoring whiteness through a white savior complex. As the titular narrator waits in line to board her flight another character reminded her that she might be in the wrong waiting area as this was first class; to which upon the disclose that his assessment was misplaced he chucklingly replied to a nearby fellow that: “they’d let anybody in first-class nowadays”. Beyond the intricate chair choreography, nuanced lightening and poignant dialogues there’s this distinct interplay to extirpate the elephant in the room: the audience; where the laughter was a-synchronized maybe by color, class or age: I couldn’t tell but one thing for sure there was different waves of chuckles within the public. Laughed, awed and gasped at different moments compare to the other audience members of the play. One particular scene informs the public that whiteness indulges itself in a burst of soothing laughter out of guilt rather than through genuine joy when confronted with their privilege, micro-aggressions and their history of violence.
As the play unfolds one cannot help but feel removed from the conversations as the dialogues move toward white fragility and affirmative actions which goes hand in hand to create a sense of insecurity; where privilege seems to falsely inches itself away from whiteness. From first-class flight tickets, to boys clubs, to Ivy League education the play brush upon the insincere notions of belongingness as long as it doesn’t in as much step in the toe of white privilege. The play hits its stride through an exegesis of exchanges depicting the play writer’s personal account of deconstructing white fragility through casual exchanges without resorting to any mischievous ploy that might trigger indignation. Avoiding the latter, which personally feel like an exercise of emotional labor of insurmountable proportion and tenacious patience, seems like a catch 22 devoid of any inkling of hope. The proverbial final curtain does nothing to alleviate this alienation that one might feel as the actors line up in a row at the edge of the stage while constantly repeating HELP, the title of the play, after a poignant self-reflecting soliloquy by Roslyn Ruff on being African-American in the U.S. of A. in 2020.