If you’re not working retail this Christmas Eve, spare a thought for those who are—possibly by carving out time to listen to Isaac Gómez‘s Wally World, a two-act audio play now available through Steppenwolf’s “Steppenwolf Now” digital season. And if you need a last-minute dose of resistance and joy to help you get over the last days of 2020, About Face Theatre’s digital celebration of Black queer lives, Kickback, has heart and fire to spare.
“It’s a warzone out there,” one employee says. “Actually, it’s not. It’s a multinational capitalist mastodon,” a colleague retorts.
It’s still relatively rare for plays about everyday working people—or at least, ones that don’t treat them solely as one-dimensional victims of nefarious market forces—to be produced in American theaters. (Weird, since workplace comedies do so well on television.) I really hope that Wally World gets a full production with Steppenwolf once it’s safe to do so. Meantime, if you’ve got the time to spare over the holiday, I suspect you’ll enjoy getting to know these characters.
As befits a show inspired by Black historic archives, there are also segments that delve into the lesser-known lives of Black queer artists. In OM Mission by ShaZah (Shanta Nurullah and Zahra Baker), we get a lesson about Black lesbian musicians of the 1920s that goes beyond Ma Rainey, such as cross-dressing Gladys Bentley, who moved from Harlem to southern California—and who gave up men’s attire (and married a man) during the McCarthy era. (She claimed that taking female hormones “cured” her of lesbianism.)
Wally World Through 8/31: available anytime with purchase of Steppenwolf NOW subscription, steppenwolf.org, $75 (see website for discounts).Kickback, open run: available online anytime, aboutfacetheatre.com, F.
