An 'Entangled Legacy'

A playwright's ears are always alert to potential inspiration, and Bob Ford found it when he shared a stage with University of Arkansas history professor Jeannie Whayne a decade or so ago.

Her topic that day was Robert E. "Lee" Wilson, a plantation owner in the Arkansas Delta, a story she would tell in print in 2011 in "Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South."

"I thought, 'Hey, this sounds like an interesting bunch,'" remembers Ford, one of the founders of TheatreSquared and author of "Look Away," which has its world premiere there this weekend. "I took her to lunch and asked her, 'Are there any good stories?'"

Whayne told him three, she remembers -- one about the repercussions of a black worker defending his mother; one about how that same black worker lost his job so his mother could be manipulated into taking one; and the third, about "two young African-American men caught out on the levy with a couple of white girls."

That story became the seed for "Look Away."

"The stakes are incredibly high in this new drama -- an intimate emotional thriller with profound themes, based on true events," says Martin Miller, T2's executive director. "This is a play about two young men on the most difficult night of their lives. They can't face it alone. But who can they trust?"

The story, says Ford, "grabbed me for several reasons. First of all, it's high drama. It also hit a huge ignorant zone in my own education about the South and American history. And the particular way this story ends ultimately made me have to tell it. The way it is resolved really goes straight to the history of race relations."

To tell it properly, Ford says, required a director who was known for his prowess with actors -- but also one who could speak to the black experience. His first choice was Benny Sato Ambush, who is senior distinguished producing director at Emerson College in Boston and has directed for Old Globe Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Rep, Magic Theatre, Geva Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Ford's Theatre, Lincoln Center and dozens of other major regional theaters.

"When I read an earlier draft, the first scene grabbed me, and I couldn't put it down," Ambush says. "For me, it was a page turner.

"The terrain Bob is exploring is what the country is grappling with as we speak," Ambush says. "It's told in an historical context, but 1933 wasn't all that long ago. It's solid writing, and it's an emotional thriller. In rehearsals, the actors are doing the work, but by the end of rehearsal, I'm rung out and exhausted. It's that kind of work. And we have an amazing cast throwing itself into it 150 percent every time."

Being African-American couldn't help but influence his direction, Ambush says.

"We all expand out of who we are. My world view is informed by my cultural and racial composition and my experiences in the past. I am African-American of Japanese extraction -- my maternal grandfather is Japanese -- but I am informed by African-American culture. This story resonates very deeply with me as it does for whites and anybody else in this country. It speaks to the entangled legacy of race, power and sex in this country. It's searing. It's poignant. I also think it's a story about love and the fight for the freedom to love whom your heart seeks and desires."

"The great thing about good plays is that you start to relate to 'the other,' to see that person isn't as 'other' as you thought," Ford says.

"One of the unique transformative powers of theater is to see ourselves in the other," Ambush agrees. "There's a universal element in this story I hope people will recognize no matter who they are. 'I can see that. I can understand that. That could be me.'"

NAN What's Up on 01/30/2015