UCSB Theater/Dance Presents THE WHITE CARD

UCSB's Department of Theater and Dance presents The White Card, the first time this play has been staged on a college campus. It is a theater production by award winning writer Claudia Rankine. The White Card opens on November 21st and runs through November 24th in the Studio Theater on the UCSB campus. Directed by Shirley Jo Finney, UCSB students come together to express crucial ideas about race in our society.

Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles's intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist's studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what-and who-is actually on display. Rankine's The White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself. Director Shirley Jo Finney summarized the show in one sentence: "The White Card is important story of a well-intentioned family trying to heal and confront themselves through art, identity, and politics."

The writer Claudia Rankine has received many honors for her writing, she was elected chancellor of the Academy of American poets, she received the Jackson Poetry Prize, and a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Rankine is also a part of the Macarthur fellows program, which is a five year grant given to individuals with exceptional creativity to further pursue their work. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Nothing in Nature is Private, An American Lyric, Don't Let Me Be Lonely, and The End of the Alphabet.

Claudia Rankine said, "The White Card stages a conversation that is both informed and derailed by the black/white American drama. The scenes in this one-act play, for all the characters' disagreements, stalemates, and seeming impasses, explore what happens if one is willing to stay in the room when it is painful to bear the pressure to listen and the obligation to respond."

Join the UCSB Theater/Dance as we explore a provocative, relevant drama for an election season and the times in which we currently live. Tickets are available at the UCSB Theater and Dance box office, by phone at (805) 893 - 2064, and online at www.theaterdance.ucsb.edu.