Last night I went once again to Woolly Mammoth Theatre and this time saw one of the best plays I've seen in a long time. Certainly top two for my time in DC.
Clybourne Park revisits some of the race issues addressed in A Raisin in the Sun (where a black family moves in to a white neighbourhood). Act One deals with this same situation - a white family sells their house to a black one. Act Two looks at the same neighbourhood 50 years on where the roles are reversed and a white family is moving in to the now predominently black neighbourhood. It deals not only with race but class and the classes within the races (if that makes sense).
I wonder if the presence of so many works around the issues of race that I've seen this year has to do with DC and it coming to terms with its own turbulant history, or if it's because it's 2010 and with this President people are looking back at what's come before and assessing what progress has been made. The American friend I went with last night said that certainly it's not a common theme in the off-Broadway plays of New York. But we are so far south here, and it seems the wounds have not fully healed. Things are still fresh in people's minds (the race riots in DC were only 40 years ago - easily within living memory).
Does art help heal? Will the discussions that come from the art help? I suppose this remains to be seen.