Next Season:
"Ten Million Black Republicans"
By Steve Gold and Tom Ferriter
Ten Million Black Republicans is a drama about politics that centers on one man's passage across the treacherous landscape of the Congressional electoral process. Through its theme and story, the play addresses issues of profound significance within our evolving multi-cultural urban and suburban communities and the political infrastructure which they support: the fine line between assimilation and the preservation of cultural integrity; the challenge of maintaining an objective distance while pursuing a subjective end; the conflict between the expression of individual personality and the creation of a political identity; the problem of the need for personal recognition versus the need for an institution to perpetuate itself; and the ever-present potential for political expediency to overpower the goals of enlightened political leadership.
The emergence of an African-American identity forged by the legacy and ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr. echoes on several levels through the themes and issues addressed within the story of Ten Million Black Republicans. The play provides a detailed focus on an educated and enlightened African-American middle class couple, enfranchised by the victories of the modern American Civil Rights movement and nestled within a secure suburban lifestyle, whose stability is suddenly compromised by the unhealed wounds and hidden secrets of its own racist past. In sharp contrast, the smoldering and unresolved racial prejudices of a spoiled, white, and all-powerful Westchester County party membership bent on maintaining the status quo of its influence is exposed when the shallowness of its tolerance of racial differences is revealed by the unraveling of the mechanics of its own nominating process. Although the themes and issues of Ten Million Black Republicans are deadly serious, the play is an often hilarious, yet sometimes painful, comedy of circumstance where strength of character is put in play by the allure of privilege and the temptations of power.
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