TimeLine Theatre’s “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley,” with Teagle F. Bougere/Photo: Brett Beiner Photography
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In the 1960s, there was a vogue for so-called “documentary drama,” plays featuring more-or-less literal reenactments of historical events, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security-clearance hearing, Vietnam War policymaking meetings, Pope Pius XII’s prolonged passivity in the face of the Holocaust, etc. These plays were popular for a while, but audience interest eventually waned, in part because they hewed too closely to unfiltered reality, denying viewers the artistic experience of breaking through the surface of things into the deeper layers of subjective experience.
TimeLine Theatre’s “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley,” adapted and directed by Brooklyn-based Christopher McElroen, is in this vein, revealing its strengths and weaknesses. The work consists of a verbatim replaying of the debate held at England’s Cambridge University on February 18, 1965, which pits the renowned Black writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin against right-wing commentator and National Review founder William F. Buckley. The two addressed, pro and con, the loaded question, “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
A site-specific work, “Debate” succeeds spectacularly in pulling us into that epic confrontation, which was filmed at the time by the BBC and is available online. What it doesn’t accomplish, quite intentionally, is to open up the characters or present their arguments in relation to the human beings making them. As the title tells us, this is indeed a debate, not classic theater. It’s an educational event aimed at the intellect, rather than a story with a plot moving toward climax—just as our society’s own racial tensions are forever debated yet never quite resolved.
Set in the most perfect of venues—DePaul University’s century-old Cortelyou Commons, a Gothic edifice that resembles the Cambridge Union—“Debate” is very much an academic exercise, casting the audience in the part of the students who witnessed the 1965 event and compelling us to listen closely and critically, take sides and actively interpret what we’ve just heard. The debate we experience is sharp-edged, high-toned, eloquent and civil, in a way that would be impossible in our own day of Fox News and Internet trolls. It’s also depressing, as we slowly realize that the verbal jousting from sixty years ago is no historical relic, but rather a conversation that could be taking place today in a society that, in racial matters, tends to take two steps backward for every one forward.
Baldwin (Teagle F. Bougere) and Buckley (Eric T. Miller) are the stars of the evening, but their approximately half-hour-long discourses are preceded by shorter (and eminently cuttable) commentaries by two student orators. They’re played here by an alternating pair of DePaul theater majors, one of whom seemed to suffer from either real or staged nerves on opening night. The speeches are punctuated by black-and-white video clips of the 1965 event, which simultaneously serve to bring us closer to the past and to underscore our distance from it.
The performers playing Baldwin and Buckley don’t strongly resemble the originals physically. As adapter/director McElroen states in a program note, the goal was to “step away from impersonation and instead focus on the power and universality of their arguments.” This makes sense on a teaching level, but it’s a bit disorienting to see “Baldwin” without his hypnotic eyes and accusatory stare, or “Buckley” without his trademark nasal whinny of a voice and aura of patrician disdain. The parts don’t call for traditional, dimensional acting, but the two performers give us plenty of what’s needed, which is strong oratory, audibly delivered and shaded with sharply contrasting attitudes.
TimeLine Theatre’s “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley,” with Eric T. Miller/Photo: Brett Beiner Photography
As for the arguments themselves, they are on very different levels. Baldwin’s speech is a heartfelt plea for respect based on his own daily experience of casual humiliation, while Buckley’s is an elaborate rationalization for continued inaction, undergirded by a hint of reactionary violence. It’s no wonder that, in a vote of the original attendees, Baldwin’s affirmative position easily carried the day. As Baldwin lucidly describes his own situation, America appears a kind of propaganda machine designed to “destroy [African Americans’] sense of reality”—for example, to get Black people to side with the cowboys or cavalry in Westerns, even though, rationally, they should identify with the Indians. In Baldwin’s telling, to the mass of its Black citizens, the American Dream is the brass ring placed just out of reach in order to distract them from the indignities of the here and now.
Whereas the depth and sincerity of Baldwin’s monologue create a connection with his listeners, Buckley seems more intent on impressing them with his polysyllables. But the arguments don’t hold water. For example, we learn that freedom, the very basis of the American Dream, can be preserved only if, like the good china, it is never actually dusted off and put to use. Also that Baldwin’s wild talk of trouble ahead if America continues to treat people of color as second-class citizens ill serves his own people, whose only hope is the social mobility that our nation offers so generously to everyone else. According to Buckley, Baldwin would be better off encouraging Black people to “make certain exertions” in order to achieve greater individual success within a larger society whose racism is somehow both nonexistent and unchangeable. As exceptions to Buckley’s religious belief in American exceptionalism, Black Americans are a flaw in the scheme of things whose problems can only reflect their own lack of initiative. Any resistance on their part to an otherwise benevolent system must be met with righteous force by the oppressors, who are actually the victims of gadflies and troublemakers like Baldwin.
Yes, it’s dispiriting to realize how little real, permanent progress has been made since 1965. It’s also a grim but necessary lesson to see the topsy-turvy logic of white supremacy—now in as strong a position as it’s been since the days of George Wallace and the segregationist White Citizens’ Councils—expressed and rebutted so clearly. “Debate” is pre-scripted docudrama—an outward sketch of history, rather than an inward exploration of its implications and effects. But it’s very much worth seeing, raising essential questions about our past, present and future. Not least among these questions is why the debate depicted here, seemingly decided sixty years ago, goes on round after frustrating round.
TimeLine Theatre Company’s “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley” runs through March 2 at DePaul University’s Cortelyou Commons, 2324 North Fremont. Showtimes are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:30pm; Saturday at 4pm and 8pm; and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $40-$75, available by calling the TimeLine box office at (773)281-8463 ext. 6 or at timelinetheatre.com.
