Fonseca Theatre's "Blackademics": Who serves and who is served?

Ann and Rachelle size each other up before ordeal.

The witticism credited to poet-critic Randall Jarrell that academic battles are vicious because the stakes are so low has dated rather surprisingly in our era, when larger social tensions raise the stakes significantly in the educational field.

The struggle is pitched up toward a weaponized resolution in Idris Goodwin''s "Blackademics." Fonseca Theatre Company opened the one-act drama Friday night in a production brimful of hip-hop buzz and scrutiny of black sisterhood and academic ambition.

The 21st-century stakes are indeed high when higher education's focus on diversity is subject to whims of administrative fashion and political power centers. There are no more tempests in teapots of the kind Jarrell made fun of in the mid-20th century. The focus on African-American literature that Rachelle, an ambitious young teacher, has developed turns out to be too narrow to secure her career as "people of color" become the flavor of the month at the state university where she has taught. In contrast, the older academic striver, Ann, wants to reconnect with her younger friend to celebrate her achievement of tenure at a liberal-arts college in the same town.

In a surrealistic style, "Blackademics" suggests that the real power continues to be administered from the white mainstream. The unlikely holder of the whip in this show is a crisply tailored, officious server at a cafe of high-end reputation far away from any black community. "Server" is a beautifully ambivalent word in the context of this show, because Georgia seems as ready to serve a couple of patrons as items on a hidden menu as she is to serve them in the usual sense of catering to their appetites and tastes.

The set is bare with walls suggesting in tone and arched doorways a reserved elegance. Bernie Killian's design seems just perfect, though the audience's initial surprise at the complete absence of tables and chairs is not relieved for some time. Georgia is in total control, and the occasion that Ann has set up goes wrong as both women are forced into a game of privation, bullying, and meager, doled-out rewards. 

The two friends are bound to find the game rigged and designed to pit them against each other. AshLee Baskin and Chandra Lynch exuberantly play the title characters, revealing differences imposed by "colorism" and sexuality, as well as the vagaries of academic trends, as they tussle and share their plights. 

Brought to her knees, Ann addresses bossy Georgia.

For a while, I thought they were chewing the scenery a bit, especially Baskin as the demonstrative Ann. The dialogue has the outsized energy and volubility of hip-hop. Then, prompted by the studied artificiality of Caroline Sanchez's Georgia, I detected the sure hand of director Ansley Valentine in guiding the performances through a style that hems in the full humanity of all three characters, though Georgia's is questionable. Each woman stands for something outside herself, and the playwright's satirical targets are outlined in Crayola colors. His critique of white supremacy, a controlling system even when it seems to advance black cultural status now and then, is unremitting. 

There is a dark magic in Georgia's control that goes beyond mere psychological manipulation. It pervaded
all three portrayals on opening night. The scary scenes of physical and mental debilitation undergone by Rachelle and Ann had absorbing detail and concentration. Sanchez's performance rose to wizardly heights as Baskin and Lynch crumple believably under Georgia's spell before their characters take on solidarity and determination at the end. 

The stakes of higher education couldn't be higher, after all. We may all have some version of this Georgia on our minds. 

[Photos: Ankh Productions]