Gilman’s Fascinating Play Hits Close to Home by Julie Johnson This weekend’s Winter Term production of playwright Rebecca Gilman’s Spinning into Butter holds a mirror to the face of Oberlin College. The play not only confronts realities of institutional racism, but also brings to the surface inner tensions caused by the inevitability of racism within the self. Spinning into Butter premiered in 2000 and received the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center for New American Plays and a Jeff Award. Situated on a small liberal arts campus, Butter opens in the office of Dean Sara Daniels, played by junior Lara Dredge. A group of faculty and administrators are discussing what do about the racist hate mail sent to African American student Simon Brick. Focusing on the administration’s reactions and their decision processes, the play mostly shows interactions among the administration, except for two students and one security officer, and all but one of the characters are white. What follows are horribly real scenes in which every careless and politically incorrect comment and diminutive statement slurs out of faculty and administration mouths as they wrestle with how to respond to the incident. “I think [students] will recognize so much in this play. When I saw this in Pittsburgh, everyone else just clapped and walked away, and I was thinking, ‘Does anyone else realize that Oberlin College was just on stage?’ I decided this has got to be seen at Oberlin,” senior co-director of Butter Aqila Mayle said. Mayle and senior co-director LeAnna Hallman have extended personal invitations to Oberlin administrators. “I realized how many similarities there were in what you feel, and not just people of color, but any person who lives through any form of oppression,” sophomore Sehban Zaidi, who played Patrick, the only person of color in the play, said. “It really is our pain that binds us in so many ways.” Not only is Butter’s commentary on the dueling necessity and futility of politically correct language poignantly apropos, but the play manages to also include non-race issues of exclusion and objectification. “You don’t want to be the representation of your people and at the same time want to be the best representation of your people,” Zaidi said. Professor Ross, played by senior Peter Meredith, is an immediately recognizable bleeding-heart liberal, who insensitively confesses his romantic troubles to former lover Daniels and exposes a misogynistic basis for relating to women. Another sub-plot introduces classism into the mix as the faculty continually abuse their hierarchical power over security guard Mr. Meyers, played by first-year Rick Sahlin. “I don’t think anyone can ever understand everyone else, and that makes it futile. I think that’s what this play is about, you learn things about people.” Dredge’s performance as Dean Daniels pulled through the character’s unrelenting cynicism and exposed the depth of her journey through rediscovering the racism within herself. “I didn’t completely relate to [Daniels], but there are a couple things she says that do resonate with me, things I know I have thought before, which makes it really difficult because you don’t want to identify with someone as screwed up as that. At the same time, I think it’s important that I take responsibility for the thoughts that I do have that resonate with that character and to acknowledge and work on those things,” Dredge said. It was truly amazing, considering that Butter was an Oberlin theater debut for everyone on the cast except one, how superb the acting was. Meyers filled the shoes of the empathetic voice of reason to a tee and senior Ariel Emmerson as Dean Catherine Kennedy made the stereotypical anal-retentive character fabulously compelling “Oberlin campus is a very political campus, but in terms of theater, it’s for entertainment purposes only or deep, macabre plays that make you think but aren’t very political or socially relevant,” Hallman said. “Oberlin has a huge history in terms of race relations and has been a big part of dealing with race. It’s been one of the leaders, but it hasn’t been lately and is actually declining.” Butter does a lot to expose what happens behind closed doors.

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