ONSTAGE Growing up in rural Louisiana, queer black comedian and social worker Luna Malbroux was pretty familiar with assumptions people might make about her. Hearing fellow comedian Mindy Kaling talk about how she carries herself with the entitlement of a white male made a big impression of her, and partly inspired her to write her play How to Be a White Man (at Burial Clay Theatre, March 23-April 1).
Malbroux, who leads anti-bias and anti-racist workshops, performed in the play with Faultline Theatre company at PianoFight last year. She got good feedback, but some people, including from Rodney Earl Jackson, Jr., who has an M.F.A. in theater from Carnegie Mellon, saw it more as a performance piece than a play.
Jackson, who co-founded the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company, knew Malbroux because they were both doing a residency at the African American Art & Culture Complex, which gave them access to the offices and theater there (“like a African American futuristic We Work,” Jackson said.) They talked about reworking How to Be a White Man, and now they’re putting it on with Jackson directing and Malbroux starring.
In the first version, Malbroux says, there were eight or so characters, and now there are just two.
“There’s a black woman and a white man,” she said. “I don’t want to give it all away, but it explores identity and power in a relationship. Also when I first wrote this, Obama was president [both she and Jackson laugh] and a lot has changed between the summer of 2017 and now, so I wanted to make sure it goes deeper.”
Jackson says the previous play had a lot of different stories in a vignette style, and now it’s possible to go more in depth. Because they share an office with each other as well as others involved in the play, they can check in with each other. This is helpful to her as a writer, Malbroux says, giving her immediate feedback, which she’s used to as a stand-up comic. Asked for an example of an idea she got or something she changed as a result of talking with her co-workers, both Malbroux and Jackson start laughing again. They were thinking about the artistic director of the play, a black woman, and what she said during a conversation about the concepts of the show.
“She said when she was young and starting her own business, she would be taken more seriously if she said she was ‘Stanley Emerson’s secretary,'” Malbroux said. “He was a character she created to do business. We just lost it. I said, ‘I’m going to use this.'”
In How to Be A White Man, Malbroux plays Michelle, about to get a job at a SNL-like show, Avocado Nation, but constantly feeling the pressure to be twice as good, being a black woman in comedy. Her white male foil is played by Kevin Glass.
Jackson, who appeared in Motown the Musical as well as Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, about the Temptations, has directed musicals before, but this is his first time directing something like this, and he says it was fun to get the comedy and drama across just using words. Malbroux thinks this version of the play is easier to connect with, and she’s loving it as a writer and actor.
“The people I work with inspire me on the daily,” she said. “I work with Kevin Glass, and having his support and Rodney’s and doing a play that has such tense subject matter and we all get along and love each other—that means a lot.
HOW TO BE A WHITE MAN
March 23- April 1
Burial Clay Theatre, SF.
Tickets and more info here
