WEEKEND MAG

April 14: "Student to keep Web site -- Pitt won't shut down project described as racist"

April 27: "Penn State announces plans in addressing racist threats"

May 31: "Suit accuses CMU police of racism -- widow, three others say hatred killed chief"

Recent Post-Gazette headlines could have inspired Rebecca Gilman's controversial new play. "Spinning Into Butter," however, is a fictional drama loosely based on the racial conflicts Gilman witnessed at a small, New England liberal arts school.

The sad truth is that overt acts of racial intimidation and subtle acts of passive racism happen daily at colleges across the United States. Decades after passage of the Voting Rights and Fair Housing acts and more than a century after the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, students of all races are forced to feel uncomfortable - - or worse -- at some of the very institutions of higher learning that made headlines as leaders of the civil rights movement. As the schools are confronted with the nation's persistent social problem, the line between personal responsibility and institutional culpability becomes challenged and blurred.

Edward Gilbert, former Public Theater artistic director, accepted the challenge of directing the timely play after the Public lost the rights to produce its own version of Michael Frayn's Tony-winning "Copenhagen." His mission, he says, is to "not get in the way" of a gripping drama that is as current as today's paper.

"Spinning Into Butter," a title taken from Helen Bannerman's children's tale "The Story of Little Black Sambo," addresses racism among well-meaning liberals at the fictional Belmont College when racially offensive notes are tacked to the dorm room door of one of the school's few black students. The play sparked theatrical and academic interest when it opened off-Broadway last autumn.

To more fully understand the play, Gilbert says he researched Gilman's experience at Vermont's Middlebury College and caught up on newspaper accounts of similar racial unrest at other institutions.

While it's inevitable that American colleges are forced to deal with the problems of the nation at large, Gilbert says it's "still disturbing" to read the headlines. Some of the most recent and provocative accounts of campus race relations have occurred at Penn State, Pitt and CMU:

* At Penn State, where black students have received racist and threatening letters, the administration recently conceded to minority demands to expand its African-American studies department and increase the number of scholarships for black students.

* The University of Pittsburgh drew national attention for ordering and then rescinding an order that a student dismantle a private Web site that invited visitors to use racial slurs rating "how black" people are.

* Last week, in a claim of reverse racism, the widow of a longtime CMU police chief and white members of the force sued ranking faculty members and the now-acting police chief for condoning a workplace so riven by racial strife that the chief died of a heart attack trying to cope with black hatred of whites on the force.

"The incident described in the play is fictional, but the issues are very real," says Gilbert.

Tom Poole, associate vice provost for educational equity at Penn State, says that although he hasn't seen the play, he and other faculty members live the drama unfolding in State College.

"We deal with a delicate and sometimes difficult balance," he says. "Part of the vitality of a campus is attained through the open exchange of ideas and the protection of free speech. Now, some of that speech is despicable, but in higher education, rather than censoring speech, a more appropriate approach is to counter [it] with ideas based in the value of equality."

Dennis Dunham, Pitt's director of the university student judicial system, who will participate in a Public Theater panel discussion addressing issues confronted in the play, describes Gilman's script as, "very real and very authentic."

"It could happen at any predominantly white campus in the U.S.," he says. "We have a race problem in this country. These campus issues are just a reflection of our culture. That's why this drama is so difficult for some people. It shows how even good people are flawed when they try to look at things based on race. They find they're looking into the mirror and seeing themselves."

Gilman's ability to reflect personal race perceptions back upon the audience was so natural, says Gilbert, that his job was merely to "just get out of the way." In his first professional appearance here since leaving the artistic director post last summer, Gilbert says he chose not to make a personal directorial statement.

"You impose yourself on a play when the reason for doing the play is not immediately apparent," he says. "I might want to do a Shakespeare play and, as director, have to forcefully explain to the audience why I'm getting excited about this play after 400 years. But in this case, none of that applies. In the newspaper business, people are admired for the crispness and freshness of their work. In the same way, this is a very polished piece of work. It's very finished, unlike that of many young contemporary playwrights."

Gilbert says he merely tried to make the office scenes seem officious. Casting, he says, was his secret tool in "Spinning Into Butter."

"You don't want to bear down hard when a script, like this one, is written with great specificity," he says. "Instead, I cast it very carefully. I took a lot of time and found people who could tell the human story with their presence. A person who seems gruff plays the gruff personality and etc. It was typecasting to a degree."

Gilbert says his greatest challenge was in articulating the literary voice of a female playwright.

"What often happens in theater," he says, "is that plays written by a woman are directed by a woman. There's a certain point of view that comes from the fact that it was written by a young woman. As a director, I realize how rarely I've been in [this] position."

Stage Preview

`SPINNING INTO BUTTER'

Where: Pittsburgh Public Theater at O'Reilly Theater, Downtown.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays (except 7 p.m. July 3); 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays; 2 p.m. June 23 and 30 and July 5 and 7; no show July 4. Through July 8.

Tickets: $20-$42. 412-316-1600.

Panel discussion: Monday at 7 p.m. in the Helen Rauh Rehearsal Hall at the O'Reilly Theater, Downtown. Speakers include Barbara Smith (Assistant Vice President for Human Resources, Carnegie Mellon University), Everett Tademy (Director of Equal Opportunity Services, Carnegie Mellon University) and Dennis Dunham (Director of the University Student Judicial System, University of Pittsburgh). The lecture is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, call 412- 316-1600 for reservations.