Buzzer by Tracy Scott Wilson and directed by Anita Montgomery is one of a cluster of plays this winter that hold a mirror and magnifying class up to their audiences on the fraught territory of race, class, sexuality, and property rights. What is a buzzer in terms of the play? It’s many things. Like the broken entry system in a high rise that only alerts you someone is at the door downstairs, but it doesn’t allow you to open the door from your unit, so you have to run downstairs. It is the silent vibrations of the Blackberry carried by Jackson, a black corporate lawyer (played by Andrew Lee Creech) that he has to continually check. And, it is the conversations that the playwright hopes to engender on the issues of gentrification, race, and class.
Jackson has found a renovated condo in his former neighborhood to buy. He invites his white girlfriend Suzy (played by Chelsea LaValley) to move in with him. Apparently the relationship hadn’t gone to that level before because she hesitates a moment before agreeing. No sooner than they finish unpacking boxes than Don (Spencer Hamp) arrives. He’s white and Jackson’s best friend who is making his 8th or 9th try to rehabilitate himself away from his addictions. He also needs a place to stay.
Pete Rush, costume designer, has helped the clothes the characters wear establish their characters for us. Keeping Jackson in a office clothes the entire play made it like a second skin on him. Don has his blue jeans and a fresh pair of designer hi-top sneakers, and Suzy was adorned in yogawear and button-down shirts or a simple blouse under a sweater.
For Jackson to get where he finds himself: a graduate of Exeter boarding school, then Harvard followed by Harvard law school, followed by a position in a high-power corporate law firm, has taken tremendous focus. His mother supported him, of course, but also, curiously, Don’s father, who has unofficially adopted Jackson. Jackson and Don’s dad go to lunch frequently, and Don’s dad gave Jackson an engraved luxury watch as a graduation gift when he completed law school. Creech carries the energy of Jackson like someone trying to keep teams of horses attached to each arm from pulling him apart. Jackson is in the middle of everything: his career, the return to his former neighborhood as one of the gentrifiers, and the trio of friends living in the condo he just bought.
In a brilliantly staged scene, Jackson stands in the middle of Catherine Cornell’s airy set and alternatively negotiates with Suzy (“Please, Suzy, he’s my best friend. I don’t let my friends down”) or Don (“Look, this is only temporary”) and neither Suzy nor Don are included or seem to see the conversation he is having with the other one.
What I like about that brief scene is the respect for the audience’s imagination it holds. It trusts that we will quickly be able to understand that if there was a spotlight we would first see Jackson and Don, then Jackson and Suzy, and back to Jackson and Don. But it didn’t need that help, we got it.
Before this scene Don had directly addressed the audience and told us how he’d come to needing to beg for a place to stay. Hamp was so comfortable inside this role that when he stepped on stage and said “Hi” several audience members answered “Hi” back. As the white drug abusing friend from a wealthy suburban family, Hamp’s Don had the spoken precision of someone educated at Exeter with Jackson, and the fluid body motions of a hangout artist. He also offered into this triangle some of the philosophies he was hearing at his recovery support meetings or from his sponsor. He insists that they have “family meetings” and be open and honest with one another. “No secrets” they pledge to one another. You can guess how long that lasts.
Suzy teaches at a Brooklyn high school. She finds herself on administrative leave for two weeks for using the term “mother fracking,” when telling a student to put a book down he was seemingly intending to use on the head of another student. She smokes as her stress-reduction method of choice. She finds herself reaching for a smoke more and more as the sexual harassment she experiences on the street corner escalates. Jackson, following up on her commitment to quit, doesn’t leave any around for her to find.
Don can see this harassment from the window, but he and Suzy keep it from Jackson for a long time. When Jackson learns of it he’s pulled again into the middle and feels a strong need to confront the harassers. Which of the gallant men have the better insight into what to do: Jackson with his idea of a puffed out chest confrontation or Don with a streetwise “yo, what’s up?” approach? Should Suzy—as the distressed damsel—prevent them both from doing anything? Then what’s to become of her and her experiences when she is not in the condo? Whose call is it? Whose neighborhood is it?
If you happen to see this production and talk about it with your friends or at one of the several panel discussions on the calendar, please spring from the play into other relevant topics. Anita Montgomery begins her program notes with “in this [presidential] election year I’ve been feeling more than my usual amount of dread.” Wilson has given her nothing in the script to call out politics at any level. This is not the only play that fails to mention politics; it is also never mentioned at other recent plays around Seattle that have gentrification, social identity, class, and the use of space among their themes. Missed opportunities every one of them to widen the scope of the conversation.
Follow this link to learn more about post play panels and community forums.
Buzzer by Tracy Scott Wilson, directed by Anita Montgomery. Runtime: 90 minutes, no intermission. ACT-A Contemporary Theatre, 700 Union Street in downtown Seattle. For tickets call 206-292-7676 or go to acttheatre.org. Show runs Feb 3 – Feb 21.