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JUDY WOODRUFF: A new play on Broadway is drawing lots of attention this winter, and not just because of its famous leading star. It's a new drama that explores big issues about race, class, criminal justice, and what it's like to raise a black son in America. Jeffrey Brown has a look at the intense story of American Son.
JEFFREY BROWN: Four a.m., the waiting room of a Miami police station, a storm raging outside.
KERRY WASHINGTON, Actress: Jamal, damn it, where are you? I have sent you four texts, now five. You can't text me back? Call me.
JEFFREY BROWN: As the play American Son opens, Kendra Ellis-Connor is desperately seeking news of her missing 18-year-old son, Jamal.
KERRY WASHINGTON: There's almost like a cage element. It's this room that we're trapped in, the bit of the nightmare of the play.
JEFFREY BROWN: Kerry Washington plays Kendra, a psychology professor and a mother who's long lived with the fear of the dangers facing young black men in America today.
KERRY WASHINGTON: Grow the hell up, because that is how it is!
JEFFREY BROWN: Washington is best-known for her role as the political fixer Olivia Pope in the long-running TV series Scandal. She's also known for her off-camera activism, speaking out on violence against women and other issues. Talking with her recently at the famed Sardi's Restaurant on Broadway, Washington said she felt a need to take on the role after reading the script by playwright Christopher Demos-Brown.
KERRY WASHINGTON: I know Kendras. I have been a version of Kendra. But I have never seen her, you know, in our canon. I never, there was so much about the play that I had never seen or heard before, that I thought that, yes, this has to be part of our country's theatrical tradition.
JEFFREY BROWN: Co-star Steven Pasquale, who plays Kendra's estranged husband, Scott, an FBI agent, also sees higher-than-usual stakes in this play.
STEVEN PASQUALE, Actor: In America, I want to be doing work that sparks a conversation politically, you know, because I think we're on the wrong track. And I think this play asks all the right and hard questions of everyone who sees it.
JEFFREY BROWN: American Son unfolds all in one sparse room in the police station. It's a story of anger and pain now all-too-familiar. There's been a confrontation between a young black man and police. Something bad, very bad, may have happened. And, as in this early scene between Kendra and a young officer, the racial divide is ever-present.
ACTOR: I am doing the best I can.
KERRY WASHINGTON: Do you have a black son
ACTOR: Wow, we're really going to go there, huh
KERRY WASHINGTON: Oh, we have been there for a while. We have been there a while.
JEFFREY BROWN: We have been there.
KERRY WASHINGTON: Uh-huh.
JEFFREY BROWN: That's what you're saying. It's always there. We don't often talk about it.
KERRY WASHINGTON: That's right. And I think the play is such a great opportunity to be able to talk about it. It's always J. this, J. that.
STEVEN PASQUALE: Oh, come on. I got a nickname for my son. That's just a male bonding thing.
KERRY WASHINGTON: This thing happens with the audience where you can really hear kind of the white audience, and you can hear the African-American or other-identifying audience at times.
STEVEN PASQUALE: On a scale from Eric Holder to Darnell Jackson, Jamal is brushing right up against Darnell.
KERRY WASHINGTON: Because people laugh at different things. And the way that the character of Jamal is written...
JEFFREY BROWN: We never see Jamal, of course.
KERRY WASHINGTON: We don't, but he belongs to everyone. We actually are reminded that, within him, we all have a place in this story of this American son.
JEFFREY BROWN: It's a complicated place, though, with an interracial marriage that's fallen apart, husband and wife brought together out of concern for their son, but tangled in old tensions.
STEVEN PASQUALE: The play can't succeed if you don't believe that the marriage was real.
KERRY WASHINGTON: And good at some point.
STEVEN PASQUALE: Yes, and good for a long time, yes.
KERRY WASHINGTON: Yes.
STEVEN PASQUALE: And that the wheels come off when dealing with this issue of how to parent a biracial child in America.
JEFFREY BROWN: Also here, as we learn more about Jamal and the events of that night, the values of both black and blue lives. We won't give away more here. The play is directed by Tony Award-winning Broadway and film director Kenny Leon, with a prominent team of producers, including Shonda Rhimes, a top TV producer of Scandal and other series. Reviews so far have been mixed, with some critics praising the performances and timeliness, while others have cited weakness in the writing and structure. For these two actors, though, American Son taps into something personal.
STEVEN PASQUALE: I have been working on and off Broadway for 20 years, and Broadway is really changing. And it's scary to me the direction it's going. It tends to be a lot more family-friendly. It tends to be a lot more sort of light.
JEFFREY BROWN: And big.
STEVEN PASQUALE: And so to be in something that feels like a serious piece of work, that asks serious questions, in a serious venue, feels really important to a theater artist.
JEFFREY BROWN: In the bio in the playbill, it says actor, producer, and activist.
KERRY WASHINGTON: Mm-hmm.
JEFFREY BROWN: Do they go together for you Are they all of a piece
KERRY WASHINGTON: I have always found a very organic connection between the work that I do as an actor and the work that I do as an activist, I think, probably because our jobs involve stepping into somebody else's shoes, and that exercise of is what leads to greater empathy and respect for humanity. That comes with the desire to make the world a better place for all of us.
JEFFREY BROWN: American Son is scheduled to run through January 27. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jeffrey Brown on Broadway.
