Eleanor Burgess’s play, The Niceties, plunges the audience into the incendiary depths of a debate between a professor and her student over the exclusion of African Americans from the teaching and writing of American history. While the publicity describes this as a tour de force “about who gets to write history,” such a description is disingenuous. At its core, this is a play about differences in strategy, or what the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci called praxis – the unity of theory and practice. The professor believes change must happen slowly and strategically to be sustainable; the student sees ideas and actions as inseparable, demanding immediate cultural rupture.

 

Second Generation Theatre has staged a well-paced and strongly acted production at Shea’s Smith Theatre, directed with confidence by Gabriella Jean McKinley. Her direction shines in navigating the play’s complex terrain, modulating the pacing to allow the intricate dialogue to breathe while maintaining audience engagement throughout the prolonged confrontation.

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