Back in 2016 when she was still practicing law in Chicago, Loy Webb spent four hours every other Saturday mentoring teen girls. It wasn’t potential lawyers crowding unused rehearsal rooms at the Goodman, eager to talk with Webb. The young women wanted to know about theater criticism, from analyzing sound design to cleaning up dangling participles. Webb spent a year with the Young Critics program, helping a team of nonmale critics usher in the coming generation. When she bowed out to focus on her own aspirations as a playwright, it was an auspicious shift.
It’s not like I looked around and was like, ‘Now I need to write a play about taking a knee.’ I started it because I am a huge football fan, but with the protests going on I wasn’t able to watch. It would be irresponsible for me to put a play about football onstage without getting into all the stuff going on around it in real life.
You’ve included the “Black national anthem” [“Lift Every Voice and Sing”] in the dialogue—sung by a white woman.
Celebrity encounters?
Through 10/12: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM; also Sun 9/22 and 10/6, 3 PM, 16th Street Theater, 6420 16th St., Berwyn, 708-795-6704, 16thstreettheater.org, $30 reserved, $22 general, $18 Berwyn residents, low income, and military.
