Review: iTheatre Collaborative Presents PERMANENT COLLECTION

"Let the art speak for itself!" What alternative can there be when observers cannot see eye to eye on either the meaning or the relative value of the work ~ particularly, when their perspectives derive from distinctively different histories and experiences?

Artistic discrimination is the metaphor for racial discrimination in Thomas Gibbons' hard-hitting Permanent Collection, the second work of his race trilogy (including Bee-Luther-Hatchee and A House with No Walls), now on stage at iTheatre Collaborative.

Sterling North (T.A. Burrows), a corporate communications executive, has been appointed to succeed the deceased founder of the prestigious anti-establishment Morris Museum. His lack of experience in the arts is duly noted and resented by Paul Barrow (Bill Chamedies), the museum's long-standing education director and self-appointed guardian of its rules.

When North discovers a treasure trove of African art stored away in the museum's basement, he insists on liberating eight fertility statues and exhibiting them alongside the scores of strategically placed Renoirs, Matisses, and Modiglianis and the four token ceremonial masks that occupy a single wall. Barrow is outraged at this violation of the provisions that frame the permanent collection. Matters escalate when North claims that the museum's practices are discriminatory and that Barrow is a racist, Barrow accuses North of playing the race card, and a tenacious reporter (Carrie Ellen Jones) gets wind of the issue. Kanika (Ryan L. Jenkins), North's administrative assistant, representing a generation that feels it has transcended race, does her level best to douse the firestorm of emotions but reveals only that reason is no antidote to deeply entrenched biases.

Charles St. Clair wields his directorial brush with an acute sense of the layers of meaning in Gibbons' script and the tempo required to draw out the colors and textures of each character's emotions. His actors follow suit with the requisite shades of mood and intensity. Christopher Haines's replication of a stark and neutral gallery is the perfect canvas on which to contrast the alarming perspectives on race and tastes.

Gibbons is a righteous provocateur. He leaves unanswered the question of who among the protagonists owns the truth. He discloses, however, the logic and intractability of their positions by granting each act-opening monologues that are explosive, revelatory, and chilling reminders of the forces that perpetuate the racial divide.

Permanent Collection opened with a February 11th weekend set of performances at ASU West's Second Stage West and continues its run from February 17th through March 4th at the Herberger Theater Center's Kax Stage.

Photo credit to iTheatre Collaborative

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