Local Actors Take a Look at Age and Race in America
Troupe Shares Story of Interracial Friendship
by John MacDonald

Oberlin College was honored on Wednesday by Voices of Diversity, a three-person traveling acting troupe, and their performance of three scenes from Herb Gardner’s 1986 Tony award-winning play, I’m Not Rappaport. 
Dr. Marvin Rosenberg, an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University, Abdullah Bey, a long-time Karamu actor and stand-up comedian and Sarah May, an award-winning director and actress, put on a show in Wilder Main that not only entertained those in attendance, but also made them think critically about the issues of age and race in American society.
Gardner’s play focused on the lives of two elderly men –– Nat, played by Rosenberg, a Jewish socialist and labor organizer and Midge, played by Bey, an African-American custodian of an apartment building for 41 years. May plays two smaller roles. First she plays Mrs. Danforth, a middle-aged women who works in Midge’s apartment building, while later she assumes the role of Nat’s daughter who worries over her father’s safety as an old man in a large city. 
Centered on a city park bench, the three scenes show the two men’s strong friendship. They relate old stories together, smoke a joint and pretend to be people they wish they could’ve been in their younger years. But the initial comfort both the characters and audience feel at their companionship becomes tainted by the events that soon follow. 

Midge is fired as his apartment building turns co-operative, and Nat is mugged while walking in the park alone. His daughter brings up uncomfortable issues of his moving in with the family or to a nursing home before the two men are attacked again as they confront a drug dealer in the park.
Fine acting from both Rosenberg and Bey allow the audience to laugh and relate to their characters without difficulty. One is immediately drawn into the endearing relationship between these two men. Part of this attraction stems from their differences, and in another sense, how much they are alike. Nat is a short, stout white Jewish man with a family that worries over his safety, while Midge is a tall and slender black custodian without any close relations to visit him. 
On the other hand, their relationship is so solid precisely because they have one very important thing in common –– their need for human companionship. Though unconvincing in her roles, each of May’s two characters play the antagonist to the men’s desires for freedom and independence –– Mrs. Danforth by the news she brings of Midge’s eminent firing, and Nat’s daughter by her insistence on her father living in a more safe, though constraining, environment.

The production value of the performance, though, was far below the quality of the acting and writing. Lighting was practically nonexistent as were sound and stage design –– the set consisted simply of a park bench and some newspapers as props. This said, the main point of the performance was not to wow Oberlin’s audience with elaborate stage design, but to get them thinking about ageism and racism in America today. 
How is the fact that the two men’s friendship is interracial play into the drama? How has American popular culture affected the self-image of our elderly population? These are some of the questions I’m Not Rappaport asks, and these are some of the same questions the audience discussed with the players at the performance’s conclusion.
Serving to a major degree as a conversation starter, the power of Voices of Diversity’s performance was seen in the level of thought induced by the after-show conversation. Lasting almost as long as the three scenes themselves, Voices of Diversity’s discussion showed how much understanding can be gained by watching just a few scenes of the play. 
The power of both this troupe’s performance and Gardner’s play is their ability to communicate stimulating ideas about age and race in our society in a way we can all understand –- through the conversation of two old friends sitting on a park bench.