Play Offers Its Own Spin on Racism

“Public dialogue is never real dialogue. Nobody will admit to anything in a crowd,” says Sarah, the central character of Rebecca Gilman’s provocative “Spinning Into Butter” at Laguna Playhouse.

Sarah has just admitted her own feelings of racism--but to only one other character. Of course, she also has fessed up to the audience. The theater is one of the few places where you can experience the sensation of one in-the-flesh person admitting something, in the present moment, to a crowd.

This doesn’t necessarily constitute public dialogue. Members of the audience normally don’t respond in kind. But in its best moments, “Spinning Into Butter” challenges its audience to do just that--to talk candidly and personally about race, in their post-play conversations, in their daily lives.

Gilman’s play issues this challenge primarily to the white liberals in the audience. She’s not exposing the Ku Klux Klan here. Sarah and her fellow white administrators at a Vermont private college deplore racism. But they don’t know what to do about it when hand-scrawled racist threats are left on the door of an African American student.

Gilman never brings the black student, Simon Brick, on stage. In a Times interview, she explained that her point is to show how the white characters “created their own mythical Simon Brick, based on their own prejudices.”

This rings slightly false. Wouldn’t administrators at such a small college talk extensively with Simon, in the wake of such an incident--if for no nobler reason than to help stave off a public relations disaster? In fact, Gilman makes it clear that Sarah does talk to Simon, offstage.

In the first act--indeed, the very first scene--Gilman strays from her own focus on the white administrators by bringing on stage Patrick Chibas, a Nuyorican student who is eligible for a minority scholarship. Trying to help him apply, Sarah advises that he accept a description of himself as “Hispanic” or “Latino”--those who rule on his eligibility might not understand “Nuyorican.” He balks. Later, we hear that he has spoken out at a public forum about the Simon Brick incident, only to be shouted down by one of the administrators.

The presence of Patrick (J.T. Tepnapa, with streaked blue hair) helps the play. Even if Sarah and her colleagues might still think of him too generically, he’s certainly less abstract to the audience than he would be if we never so much as glimpsed him. Gilman’s use of Patrick in the first act calls into question the absence of Simon, especially in the second act, when Patrick is gone and when the mystery of the threats is resolved.

Perhaps Gilman, who is white, hesitated to write words on behalf of a black character. But Athol Fugard, among others, has shown that it can be done. And if Gilman felt that way, why did she then create a Nuyorican character? In a play that’s so devoted to truth-telling, the absence of Simon is evasive. The play is a little too insular because of it.

Still, Sarah is a strikingly rich character. She wrestles with her own feelings in a relentlessly searching way. Gilman emerged out of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, like David Mamet, and this play, like Mamet’s “Oleanna,” describes how a college administrator can be taken down by the new political realities on campus. But “Spinning Into Butter” is still a more comprehensive look at the issues than is “Oleanna.”

As Sarah, Jordan Baker brilliantly balances the character’s earnest attempts to help her students with her surface sarcasm and her deeper feelings of discord, futility and guilt.

Under Donna Inglima’s direction, the other administrators are all expertly drawn: Kevin Symons as Sarah’s confidant and ex-lover, Lorna Raver as a crusty senior dean and Ken Grantham as Sarah’s pompous adversary. Andrew Heffernan plays a smooth-talking senior, while Richard Rodgers is the straight-talking security chief.

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“Spinning Into Butter,” Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends with the matinee on Oct. 7. $38-$45. (949) 497-2787. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Jordan Baker: Sarah Daniels

J.T. Tepnapa: Patrick Chibas

Kevin Symons: Ross Collins

Ken Grantham: Burton Strauss

Lorna Raver: Catherine Kenney

Richard Rodgers: Mr. Meyers

Andrew Heffernan: Greg Sullivan

Written by Rebecca Gilman. Directed by Donna Inglima. Set by Dwight Richard Odle. Costumes by Michael Pacciorini. Lighting by Paulie Jenkins. Sound by David Edwards. Production stage manager Nancy Staiger.