Ruth Leon Recommends…. The Niceties

The Niceties – Manhattan Theatre Club
Click here to watch : Free

Streaming May 27 through June 13.

In Eleanor Burgess’ play, Zoe, a black student at a liberal arts college, is called into her white professor’s office to discuss her paper about slavery’s effect on the American Revolution. What begins as a polite clash in perspectives explodes into an urgent debate about race, history, and power. The play stars Lisa Banes and Jordan Boatman.

It’s hard to ignore the obvious traces of David Mamet’s Oleanna, a corrosive hit play with a similar setting – a professor’s office and the conflict between student and professor – but the issues here are different, not sexual abuse, but the truth about the Black American dilemma.

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