‘PIPELINE’ TAPS RACIAL INJUSTICE
CURTIS VON , LEFT, AND TANNER ELLIS STAR IN “PIPELINE.”
It is nearly impossible to watch Dominique Morisseau’s play “Pipeline,” at the Ensemble Theatre through June 2, and not be moved to think deeply about the plight of young black men of this country. Though the play is, on its surface, a portrait of a broken family, it’s also a biting critique of American education, one that portrays the system in which we raise black boys as a nothing other than a machine of oppression.
The play’s title is a reference to the “school-to-prison pipeline,” shorthand for the way our schools funnel students into prisons. The phrase acknowledges the facts that young African-American men are incarcerated at a higher rate than any other demographic group, that African-American students receive harsher punishments compared to white students who commit the same crime and that police presence in schools often doesn’t make students feel safer — it makes them feel like they’re in prison.
I cannot speak expertly on the statistics and science surrounding American education, criminal justice and racism. Nor is Morisseau interested in that kind of argument. On the contrary, she simply wants to tell the story of a gifted, intelligent and sensitive high schooler named Omari (Isaiah Holloway), who one day, for reasons at first unclear, acts out against his teacher.
The play is seen through the perspective of the mother, Nya (Teacake Ferguson), a teacher at an inner-city public school. Nya’s ex-husband, Xavier (Curtis Von), had decided that their son Omari was too smart for the underfunded school where Nya teaches, electing instead to send him to a private, predominantly white school miles away from home. But when Nya learns of Omari’s outburst against a teacher, she’s forced to reckon with the ramifications of her and Xavier’s parenting — and the school’s treatment of their son.
But this is not just one of those “issue plays.” Morisseau elects to appeal to the audience’s poetic sensibilities. Much of the play is structured around a theatrical presentation of Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1959 poem, “We Real Cool.” Nya teaches the poem to her class, explaining that the poem tells of a group of black teenagers who skip school to play pool. They drink. They “Jazz June,” in other words flirt with a girl. Then, the final, abrupt line: “We die soon.”
As Nya recites the poem, we see her son elsewhere onstage, saying the same words as police sirens blare. It’s a wrenching juxtaposition between the high-minded tone of the classroom and the brutal fatality of black existence.
The play offers another important literary comparison. Omari’s outburst occurs during a lesson on Richard Wright’s “Native Son.” Morisseau is smart to channel both Brooks and Wright, evoking the beauty and the pain within black literature and reminding us that these works have only grown more relevant in the era of #BlackLivesMatter.
Unfortunate, then, that the Ensemble Theatre does not seem fully equipped to present such a play. Directed by Rachel Hemphill Dickson, the production has a jokey, parodic quality to it which undermines how closely the play hews to reality. Actors use broad gestures and over-exaggerate their lines. They often refuse to face each other and talk to one another like human beings. Rather, they present their lines directly to the audience, a technique that, while oftentimes effective, fails to foster the naturalism that “Pipeline” demands.
In one scene, the father nearly threatens the life of his son, showing the cyclical nature of violence. Here, we see that everything that drives Omari’s outburst is inherited. But the audience laughs in this moment.
I can understand why a group of people looking for entertainment would chuckle at a moment of deep-seated injustice and trauma. The artists should take some of the blame, though. They have not created a tone worthy of its subject matter and thus given the audience a way out of confronting the naked truth observed by this play.
Because what’s more important than using art to drive social change? Like the films “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Pipeline” juxtaposes the beauty, intelligence and complexity of black men with the tragic plight in which our country has placed them. The play neither preaches nor argues. It asks you, instead, to simply observe what takes place with kindness and sympathy for the people portrayed onstage.
Morisseau, appealing to human decency, employs the most effective kind of political argument. If the Ensemble Theatre had risen fully to her challenge, “Pipeline” would have been one of the best productions in Houston of 2019.