Sullivan '04's 'Playing in the Dark' tests the mainstream

"Playing in the Dark," Khalil Sullivan '04's brainchild and thesis production, aims straight for the conscience, as well as the heart.

With a unique theatrical technique, a stirring script and convincing performances by the cast, "Playing in the Dark" pushes its audience members to recognize the way they hide behind the performances they constantly put on for the people around them.

"Performance doesn't just take place on a stage," Sullivan said. "When does the play begin or end? The difference is if you're cognizant of how what you present affects your audience: the people around you."

Opening last weekend and continuing April 22-24 at the Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Theatre Center, "Playing in the Dark: A Multi-Media, Minstrel Dramedy" centers on two gay male students, one black and one white, who fall in love while struggling to define and accept their identities at an unnamed university presumed to be Princeton. Sullivan wrote and directed the play to bring to light the ways in which people perform to convince themselves and others that they fit into accepted norms of behavior and identity, and the setting of the story in Princeton drives this point home.

"What happens when you have people who feel like they can't be accepted as who they are? They automatically start performing to fit the mainstream," Sullivan said. "I want them to see how they're performing and ask themselves why they think they have to perform, consciously and subconsciously."

"Playing in the Dark" accomplishes this through the minstrel theatrical form, a type of dramatization originating in the 1830s and 1840s that involved white actors using "blackface" to convey a stereotyped image of black culture. Sullivan created minstrel characters taking part in what he calls "subversive performance": instead of one racial group defining another, Sullivan's characters are creating their own false personas to hide their true identities.

Secret lovers Justin and Solomon, played by Alex Adam '07 and Rodney Deavault '07, switch back and forth between interacting as themselves and taking on the exaggerated role of the historic "dandy," a minstrel stereotype of a black man who strives for success and is assumed to be trying to assimilate into white culture. Gaudy circus ringleader costumes and bright, glowing sets indicate the transition to a mocking portrayal of Justin and Solomon attempting to take on conformist roles in Princeton culture.

Solomon's roommates, played by Jon Miller '07, Julia Cain '07 and Nicki Chandris '06, represent the university culture that Solomon fears won't accept him as black and gay. Obsessed with sex and partying, the roommates take on an exaggerated minstrel portrayal of the mythologized typical Princeton male.

"People should question, 'What does it mean to be a man or a woman? Black or white? Gay or straight?' " Sullivan said. "Can we dare to see outside these rules and see people as they are, as individuals?"

Two large television screens allow for unique representations of time and space. Solomon's second consciousness, an image of a circus ringleader played by Catherine Cushenberry '07, appears periodically on screen to show the audience the inner turmoil haunting Solomon as he struggles to accept himself as black and gay in a world that pressures people to be white and straight. The screens are part of a set conveying the discrepancy between image and reality, using symbols like puppets, marijuana leaves and a schoolgirl's plaid skirt to demonstrate the ways people distract themselves and others from their true identity.

Using a combination of these professionally-crafted sets and a poignant, clever script, Sullivan's 69th draft of the play, Sullivan shows the audience the fallacy of insufficient cynicism: "trusting everything at face value."

"We should start questioning and not go blindly into life," Sullivan said. "We should never stop looking for truth. That's why we're at Princeton: To probe and try to find out what the truth is."