Welcome to Litsy!

A play about the imagined fault line between black and white lives by Claudia Rankine, the author of Citizen 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. �from the introduction by Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine�s first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible? 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.