Theater/Dance
“The Story” of American Ambition
By Carol Chastang - SeeingBlack.com Theater Critic
Apr 7, 2006, 21:08

Fear, as depicted in Tracey Scott Wilson’s brilliant and thought-provoking play, “The Story,” makes people lie, steal, cheat and kill. The main characters in the play are motivated by a fierce streak of self-protectionism, where race and class lines are blurred and ultimately—and tragically, collide.

In a riveting recent production by the African Continuum Theatre Company in Washington, DC, reporter Yvonne Robinson (Chinasa Ogbuagu) declares that she’s ready to set the world of journalism on fire. Never mind that she’s the new African-American hire at a major metropolitan daily newspaper, assigned to the “community center opening” beat in the Outlook section of the paper. Or that her editor Pat (Jewell Robinson) is the token Black female who has a chip on her weary shoulders from years of challenging the paper’s gatekeepers to run more “uplifting” stories about people of color. Another thorn in Yvonne’s side is Neil, (KenYatta Rogers) the equally ambitious Black male reporter in Outlook section who is suspicious of Yvonne, referring to her as “the unsure sister.” The talented Rogers is believable as the posturing young male who is covering up insecurities that may run deeper than Yvonne’s.

Wearing a dark pin-striped power suit accessorized with her aggressive, arrogant demeanor, Yvonne has “Ivy League credentials,” a white boyfriend named Jeff who is also an editor at the paper (Jason Stiles), and laser-beam focus on getting on the high-profile National desk. And she’s going to do whatever it takes to get there.

While the city is reeling from tensions in the aftermath of a shooting death of a white schoolteacher allegedly by black gang members, Yvonne meets a young girl who confides that she leads a double life. By day, “Latisha” (Mildred M. Langford) is a prep-school student who speaks Italian and German, quotes Frantz Fanon, and claims her parents were 60’s radicals who encouraged her to “not be intimidated” by the White kids at her school.

Langford’s portrayal of the schizophrenic teen Latisha hits the mark as she seems to effortlessly glide between her troubled personas. Within minutes of sharing niceties in Italian with Yvonne, Latisha tells the reporter she’s in a gang. One moment she’s talking tough, admitting to killing the White school teacher and threatening to do the same to Yvonne if she tells anyone. Seconds later, she’s whining like a spoiled princess whose parents just cut up her credit cards, begging the reporter to keep her secret.

The writing in “The Story” is smart and tight. Director David Charles Goyette does a good job of taking the audience into the confusion that ensues when Yvonne’s anonymously sourced “Confessions of a Girl Gang Member” story is published. At one point, Neil and Pat are talking to each other about the story, while Jeff and Yvonne are carrying on the same conversation. All at the same time. Then Neil and Jeff ask the same question, from across the stage. Seconds later, Pat and Yvonne make the same outraged observation. In unison. Strange as it sounds on paper, it makes perfect sense, and to the viewer the scene comes off like an intricately choreographed dance. At the end of the four-part exchange, the characters gracefully land on the same note. It’s a risky move, and in the hands of a less talented director the audience would have witnessed a train wreck on the stage.

When she’s threatened with an obstruction of justice charge for failing to reveal her source and the name of the alleged killer, Yvonne’s fabrications about her education and qualifications, and Latisha’s self-serving lies come crashing down on both women.

The revelation that Janet Cooke’s Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post story about an 8-year-old heroin addict was fiction inspired “The Story.” The many forces that pressure people to craft such manipulations are real, and playwright Wilson skillfully gives us a complex look into the tortured souls of those who believe that, as in the words of her character Latisha, “it’s hard keeping it real sometimes.”



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