It's academic: 'Sensitive Guys' shows what the real-life seminar is all about

In the cross-hairs of the #MeToo movement is the issue of academic integrity and the special status of higher education under withering 21st-century scrutiny.

Peer education: Getting into the sensitive-guy thing.

Though most recently the target has been the limits of free speech with respect to the Middle 

East conflict, permissible talk slides over into questions of permissible action on American college campuses. That's where "Sensitive Guys" trains its sights. 

With the deliberately abrasive casting of women and non-binary actors as college students identifying as men or women, MJ Kaufman's play opened this past weekend in a Theatre Unchained production at the IF Theatre, where it will continue through March 15.

The comic potential of such a show is never hidden or obscured by the serious issues of personal identity and autonomy. The long one-act play may have you laughing ruefully at times, but that's because it's so stirring, especially on the matter of enduring male privilege. Joe Wagner, identified as "director mentee, set designer, and sound designer," is partnered with "director mentor and production manager" Megan Ann Jacobs as the principal shaper of the show. 

The audience is meant to take a jaundiced view of the lofty principles attached to institutions of learning, especially when they are reaching out for applicants for admission. These are voiced over the sound system during the set changes, as tables and chairs are repositioned and actors change costumes in a merry-go-round of gender exchanges. This is a small-theater show that works well on this stage; in large, prestigious venues such as the Trump-controlled Kennedy Center, you can be sure it will never appear on the schedule.

White-male privilege is the hidden, reigning principle of institutions like Watson College, the fictional site of the action. A college official's speech frames the 90-minute drama, with the obligatory history lesson of its founding addressed to an audience of visitors. The founder seems to have established the school after his service to the Union in the Civil War. An American version of noblesse oblige motivated the post-war heroism, but always in the context of his desire to honor the wife with a clear legacy exercise of male gallantry.

The dramatic irony is immediately established. As white-male privilege has come into question, 21st-century issues have prompted the establishment at Watson of a Men's Peer Education group, which is a response to behavior that necessitated a survivors' group of women. Patriarchy has had the overtone, which probably was always there, of domination that condones or ignores abusive behavior. 

Kaufman's dramatic framework gives a tendentious edge to what we learn about the "sensitive guys" trying to address and reform their sexism, as well as to the conflicted courses of action open to the women: Simply share stories and build solidarity? Report the abuse? And to whom? Where can they turn for protection, let alone some kind of restitution? 

If you go to "Sensitive Guys," be prepared for some deft caricature, particularly of the "bro" arrogance of young men, even if they are trying to own their privileged status and neutralize it. To be sure, they have to face the complication of their actual goals: to connect sexually, or romantically, if you prefer. In more than one episode, finding the proper language moves to the fore: Is a "break" requested by one young woman the same as what her male friend (not boyfriend) interprets as a "breakup"?

I was charmed by the consistent richness of the cast's portrayal of men. Kudos to Monya Wolf, Shanya Nichole, Gayle Radwick, Sheila Raghavendran, and Anna Himes. The gestures that reaffirm the guys'  bond, the tension over what the mission of their group is, the degree of self-criticism allowed or encouraged — all that is flamboyantly exhibited. They even sit like men of the deplored stereotype, with legs spread in the space-defining manner that has justly brought  resentment from women, especially in urban transit settings. 

They are representing traditional postures and attitudes of masculinity while struggling with how to deal with slips into off-limits behavior. That has generated both their attempt at peer education and the polar opposite survivors' group of their classmates, who are sometimes still trapped in the inferiority signaled by our grandfathers' label of  female students as "co-eds."

The issues have been exposed to a light that might lead to permanent reform, but who knows? I'm far removed from the generation forced to own up finally to these issues in this play, but I remember the sort of  now-cringeworthy talk in the men's dorms of 60 years ago, where a frequent response to a guy's mention of a date the night before was the sly question: "Get any?" And everyone knew what that meant. The persistence of sexual exploitation and belittlement makes "Sensitive Guys" worth visiting, but it is also genuinely amusing and well-crafted.

[Photo by Indy Ghost Light]

c