AN unarmed Black man who hasn’t committed a serious crime. Racist and violent police officers. A bystander holding a recording device.
These ingredients have combusted often in the 2000s, with an endless cycle of shootings and resulting outrage challenging the nation’s morals and mental well-being. Some people now pull out their cellphones and start recording anytime they witness or experience a perceived injustice.
More than 30 years ago, the videotaped beating of driver Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers stunned a nation unaccustomed to witnessing that level of brutality or acknowledging systemic racism. None of the four officers charged faced consequences, fueling the deadly 1992 Los Angeles riots that laid bare the nation’s racial divisions to the world.
That was the backdrop when ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe playwright Jacalyn Kane moved to the City of Angels from New York City in 1992, and it’s the backdrop of her play In My Father’s House — which is being staged at Teatro Paraguas three decades after Kane wrote it, yet is arguably even more relevant today than it was then. At its core, it’s a love story between a Jewish woman and a Hispanic man who occupy vastly different social universes.
“I was blown away by what was going on with police brutality,†Kane says of arriving in Los Angeles. “Coming from New York City, which is such a meshing of cultures and people, there’s not that kind of blatant racism and segregation. It was also shocking to see the split between rich and poor.â€
That split is among the themes of the play, in which Alana, who’s attending graduate school while living with her parents in Beverly Hills, meets Angel, a former gang member in East Los Angeles. She falls in love with him, much to her father’s consternation.
Kane wrote In My Father’s House as a five-person play while a member of the Group Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood, then began looking for an actor to portray male protagonist Angel.
“I would go down to Olvera Street, where they have the vendors from Mexico and the food and also a church where mothers and grandmothers would go to pray for their children who were being killed in the gang wars,†Kane says. “I would sit in the back of the church and they’d be wailing and praying. It’s etched in my memory.â€
She ended up locking eyes with the man she’d been looking for at a club on the Sunset Strip.
“He saw me, I saw him, and it was like that,†Kane says. “He was sort of ex-gang; he was on the fringes of it in not such healthy, good ways. We dated for a little bit, but then we were friends. He was an actor as well. He sort of had left that life behind, although he kind of went in and out of it during our friendship and relationship.â€
The man, Gregg Thomsen, helped reshape the play’s dialogue to more closely reflect his experiences. He inspired Kane to write a two-person version of the play, which was staged in the 1990s in a short-play festival. Thomsen portrayed Angel, and Kane played Alana. The Teatro Paraguas run marks the debut of the five-person version.
“When we did the two-person version, he would say, ‘Well, [Angel] wouldn’t say it like that.’ It’s been further rewritten many times since, but that helped a lot, especially with some of the Spanish and some of the culture of what was going on,†she says. “He would bring me around it and/or talk about it.â€
Kane recently reconnected with Thomsen, and he hopes to visit ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe and see the play, she says.
“There is a lot of his character that is woven into Angel; that shows the many dimensions and helps to sweep out stereotypes,†she says. “So that’s also what I’m looking to do, because none of us are black-and-white.â€
While In My Father’s House casts some police behavior in less-than-favorable light, Kane is wary of being seen as anti-law enforcement.
“I’m outraged by, for instance, what happened on January 6,†she says of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. “It is so heartbreaking and horrific, especially for the police who committed suicide or were killed that day and the PTSD that they suffer. But there is this other side also, and even on Martha’s Vineyard, I learned from a friend who is Black about the underbelly there, that every police department in the entire country has this aspect, because when the KKK could no longer be so blunt — until recently, again — they started to infiltrate police departments. I learned this back in ’92 or ’93, and I bring it up in the play when Angel proposes the possibility to Alana.â€
Kane visited ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe for years with her husband, Gary Brown, before they finally made the move in 2020, driving cross-country at a time when many towns and businesses were closed because of the pandemic.
Veteran ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe actor Brent Black plays Alana’s father — a character based on Kane’s father, Manuel Kaplan, with whom she got along well but sometimes engaged in generation-gap arguments. Kaplan died in 2011. The other actors are Svea Kennedy, Levi Lobo, Angela Bond, Macarena Muñoz, and Pierce Anaya. Kane is co- directing the play with Brown and relishes the experience of watching professionals bring her writing to life.
“I love seeing all of the actors make choices that weren’t necessarily written into the script, and it’s helped to further the character,†she says. “So I’m usually very much surprised and delighted seeing that.â€
Kane, who is Jewish, was inspired to revisit the play after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel last year, followed by that nation’s punishing military response.
“It’s immediately brought out racism on both sides, and blame,†she says. “Like, the assumption that all Jews agree with how [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has responded? It’s so absurd. And the scapegoating of Palestinians, right? So I literally felt the spirit of a friend on the other side who was very vocal in the way that he presented his art. I felt that presence saying, ‘It’s time to do it now.’ All the artist’s insecurities over the years prevented me from ever staging it, not knowing if it was good enough or correct enough. I just knew it was time.â€Â Â