Spinning Into Butter, Rebecca Gilman’s award-winning play about unconscious bias, is presented by HSU Theatre for two weekends beginning February 27.
In decades past, battles for racial equality were fought and many were won. “Whites Only” signs are gone, and not all of the faces on TV are white. But as the country changes, the agreeable silence can mask new complexities—new avenues of unconscious bias, confusions, good intentions, self-deception and denial. It’s race in America: the next generation.
“It deals with more current forms of racism—not blatant racism but the kind of prejudice people might express without realizing it,” said director Cassandra Hesseltine. “The play is set in a college but it could be anywhere. The playwright chose to take on an historically old subject and see where it is now—checking in on society, as plays often do.”
Spinning Into Butter premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, where it won the Joseph Jefferson Award for new work. It was produced at Lincoln Center in New York in 2000, and won the Kennedy Center’s Roger L. Stevens Award. It became one of the three most produced plays in America that year. A movie version starring Sarah Jessica Parker was released in 2009.
Apart from the artistic challenges, Hesseltine was attracted to the subject in a personal way. “I look white but I’m half Mexican,” she said. “Being half Mexican has given me certain experiences while being half white has given me others. I’ve drawn on both for this play. If I had the view of just one or the other I don’t think I would have taken this on.”
“There are parts of the play that are kind of hard to hear,” Hesseltine said. “But we’re not here to point fingers at anyone. Our job is to present the play well, so that people really watch it, and maybe self-reflect. They might look at things in a way they might not have looked at them before.”
Spinning Into Butter features HSU students Mary May, Giovanni Alva, Cody Miranda, Keith Brown, and Galen Poulton, Northcoast Preparatory Academy student Indiana Steinkamp and professional actress Nadia Adame.
Scenic and prop design is by Jared Sorensen, lighting by Andrew Buderi, costumes by Rae Robison, sound by Christopher Joe and makeup by Anna Duchi and Erin Henry.
Hesseltine is directing at HSU for the first time since she was a student here. “I grew up in Orange County and fell in love with science and the environment. I only applied to HSU. I loved theatre, too but I didn’t think I could make a living at it,” she laughed. After graduating in psychology with a theatre minor, she applied theatre as therapy in working with at-risk teenagers in Eureka. Her career has been in theatre and film ever since, in southern California and the Bay Area as well as in Humboldt. She is currently Film Commissioner for Humboldt-Del Norte.
“Everyone involved is taking this very seriously and respectfully,” she adds. Perhaps with the help of her psychology background, she has also been sensitive to what the actors may face as a result of the attitudes of their characters. There are no overt racial slurs but there are lines that “are hard to hear” and therefore hard to say.
“We’ve talked about how it’s one thing to say those lines in rehearsal but another to say them with an audience. We’ve also talked about the weirdness that can happen if some people can’t completely separate them from the characters they played, once they are back in their normal student lives.”
Spinning Into Butter is performed in Gist Hall Theatre Thursdays through Saturdays February 27 through March 1, March 6-8 at 7:30 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday March 9. Tickets are $10, $8 for seniors and students, with a limited number of free seats for HSU students at each performance, from the HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. For more information visit hsustage.blogspot.com.