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One of the first rules of investigating: You cant see whats not there.
It doesnt mean that the absent thing isnt important; sometimes the gapisthe clue.
But its hard to sense … nothing.
Even from a purely commercial point of view, this seems like leaving money on the table.
Is it merely because a police story is difficult to stage from a practical perspective?
Or perhaps theres a class difference a snobby that stuffs just for TV bias?
So, okay, we dont haveLaw and Order: Backstage Crimes Uniton Broadway.
That makes a certain aesthetic sense.
But the modern U.S. theater doesnt just avoid the POV procedural.
It avoids putting the police onstage at all, whether as heroes or victims or villains or fools.
It was not always this way.
For a long slice of theatrical history, cops were onstage all the time becausecops meant comedy.
That inversion historically struck playwrights asridiculousand even adorable.
(Whenever a busybodybeadleenters a Shakespeare play, a beadles-are-idiots joke is not far away.)
Still, the musical knows who will live longer.
Then came the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
In 1965, Bloody Sunday was on every television screen, on every front page.
It wasnt only the small, by-us-for-us theaters producing this work either.
Theaters memory is extremely short.
Something we know what it was kept Sanchez and Bullins out of the anthologies of mainstream American drama.
And in the U.S., if it isnt taught, it isnt remembered.
Of course, beautiful and important and diverse work can and does come out of those structures.
But these structures also insulate a person from contact or conflict with the police.
They were both gorgeous though.
So what do we learn from these hens-teeth instances when the current American theaterdoesgrapple with the police?
For one thing, the theatrical medium fights the lionizing effect.
Copaganda fantasy has a hard time facing that kind of communal witness.
(It set records.)
Third, the theaters a place that turns that thinking (policing has gone wrong) into physical sensation.
And while recentAmerican Sonhas only one emotional key, it turns it and turns it.
A woman arrives at a police station asking about her son, and we know instantlywhat must have happened.
Our certainty is repulsive: For the plays entire duration, we have to grapple with our complicity.
Why arent we rioting that very minute?
Then theres Nwandus eerie, furious, hypnoticPass Over.
In Nwandus version, though, the pair isnt waiting for a savior.
Mister and Ossifer are played by the same actor, so you never see them onstage together.
I spoke to Nwandu about putting Ossifer in her play.
For a long time and many drafts, in fact, she didnt.
Theyd think,Ah, hes the villain; this will end poorly.
A policemans image-weight seemed, to them, too heavy for the play.
Yet another fear operates inside the process itself.
Shes not interested in Ossifer being a cartoon.
She insists that even in this violence, that person is not a monster.
Hes a human being doing monstrous things.
This embodiment issue is also a reason for theatrical avoidance.
And, now that weve noticed it, the important thing about police plays is their absence.
We dont need morehero copstories in other media.
But Id argue that wedoneed more police stories on our stages.
But someday well be back in a theater again.
And well need to get all this thinking center stage, where it belongs.
