Tracey Scott Wilson, whose recent play Buzzer is at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, once said in an interview, “The biggest issue we have in this country is race, and it’s an issue that Americans don’t talk about much.” The 48-year-old playwright, originally from New Jersey, has been doing her part to foster more dialogue.
Buzzer, a 2014 script, is set in the present, a story about returning to an evolving urban neighborhood. Wilson continues her clear-eyed explorations of race that are rendered with strength, focus and an invitation to debate. Her writing is more inclined to ask questions than to give easy answers.
In Buzzer, Wilson puts three longtime friends in close quarters in an apartment in a rapidly changing community very much like Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine. Jackson is a successful young black attorney who grew up in the neighborhood; he views acquiring an upscale apartment as a return home, even though it bears almost no resemblance to where he grew up. Suzy, his white girlfriend and a teacher at an inner-city school, has doubts about her personal safety. Don, Jackson’s white prep-school friend from boyhood who came from wealth and privilege but has made a mess of his life with a drug habit he’s trying to overcome, rounds out the trio. No stranger to the neighborhood — it’s where his addictions began — he’s trying to get beyond the struggle.
But Buzzer’s story is also about the nameless and faceless longtime residents of such neighborhoods, characterized by Douglas as “usually economically depressed people of color.” He adds, “In the heat of the transition there are palpable and sometimes explosive tensions between the outgoing and incoming residents.” The tenuous personal balance of relationships between Jackson, Don and Suzy is profoundly challenged by the neighborhood’s growing pains. The angry “buzzer” of the play’s title — enabling transitions from the world outside to the one inside — is a harsh reminder of the tough dialogue between haves and have-nots.
Buzzer continues through April 19. $30-$80. Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, 962 Mt. Adams Circle, Mount Adams, cincyplay.com.
This article appears in Mar 18-24, 2015.
