Rebecca Rafferty: My evening wrapped at MuCCC with a staged reading of Jen Marlowe’s based-on-reality play, “There is a Field.” The premise of the story is that a young man is murdered by police at a protest. His sister, a medical student, seeks answers as her family and community grieve their loss. But the answers aren’t forthcoming, and each of the characters struggle in different ways with the concept of the futile pursuit of retribution, and if and how to engage in forgiveness.
Scraps of narration punctuate and pull together bits of live acting and flashbacks, as slowly the audience learns the story of a Palestinian Arab family living in what is now Israel. It’s important to phrase it that way, because the family did not move to Israel; they never left what was once Palestine. Through anecdotes of discrimination and conflict, the play conveys a strong picture of second-class citizenship.
Both the script and the way it is presented are important in a number of ways. The story presents the brother-sister relationship in a realistic rivalry-meets-undying-love kind of way, which feels very relatable across cultures and borders.
But crucially, the show is acted entirely by a black cast. Solidarity between black Americans and Palestinians makes a world of sense. The themes of massively imbalanced power structures, police and military brutality, and authorities investigating themselves to zero effect are all too familiar. More here.
