PicksInSix Review: graveyard shift Goodman Theatre
“four lungs… one body, same skin.”
On July 10, 2015, Sandra Bland’s promising life took an unexpected turn when she was jailed following a confrontation with an officer during a routine traffic stop. The 28-year-old Bland had just moved back to Waller County, Texas, from Chicago and was on her way to the first day of a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. Three days later, the Naperville, Illinois, native was found dead in her cell. News of the young woman’s arrest and subsequent death, which was ruled a suicide, together with dash-cam video of Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia and Bland went viral, igniting public protests and fanning the debate over police brutality. Years later, cell-phone video recorded by Bland emerged, which prompted a review. To date, no indictments have been forthcoming.
Large swathes of Bland’s harrowing story inspire korde arrington tuttle’s gripping new play “graveyard shift,” which opened in its world premiere in Goodman’s Owen Theatre Tuesday. Fiercely directed by Danya Taymor, who worked with tuttle on the development of the piece in the Goodman's 2018 New Stages Festival, the play exposes the fear and reality of racism in America. The drama unfolds as an African-American couple—Janelle (Aneisa Hicks) and Kane (Debo Balogun) in searing performances—recognize that a major impediment to a meaningful future together appears to be the distance between Janelle’s jobless existence in Chicago and Kane’s recent move to Houston as a nonprofit consultant. Hope begins to soar when Janelle is hired in the marketing and communications department at Prairie View.
On the graveyard shift in the Waller County Police Department, we find Trish (Lia D. Mortensen), an administrative officer assisted by Elise (Rae Gray) and Brian (Keith D. Gallagher), an officer on temporary reassignment. Elise wants to leave Texas for Nashville and a singing career, but she is conflicted about her longtime attraction to and affair with Brian, who is married. A secret looms large.
The disparate worlds of Janelle and Brian intersect during the fateful traffic stop. It is here that tuttle’s taut drama almost inexplicably spirals out of reach to a place where truth becomes stranger than fiction. The startling events and devastating consequences that follow tear at the fabric of the young woman’s independent spirit. We’re left to wonder how the potential for love between two people—"a single organism—four lungs, but one body, same skin”—was so tragically extinguished forever.
Kristen Robinson has transformed the Owen into a stunning alley stage configuration that traverses across the expanse of the theater with the audience on each side. A single row of industrial fluorescent fixtures frames the barren expanse above. As a result, scenes are seamlessly interwoven with Marcus Doshi’s pinpoint lighting and Montana Levi Blanco’s costumes to the tempo of Richard Woodbury’s original music and haunting sound design.
PHOTOS|Liz Lauren
GOODMAN THEATRE
presents
graveyard shift
through March 8, 2020
(312) 443-3800
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