“One of the things that fascinated me is, at one point the Irish in America weren’t considered white, but then after awhile they were allowed to be white,” says Edwards by phone, shortly after arriving in Pittsburgh from his home in Los Angeles. That cultural shift, and the questions it poses about the nature of race and racial identity, fascinated Edwards. He decided to explore it through three generations of a fictional interracial family: an elderly black man, his white son-in-law, and his mixed-race grandson.
Edwards plays all three characters. He cites as inspirations performers like Richard Pryor and Anna Deavere Smith, in particular Smith’s 1992 play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.
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It has also interested me that one point Irish and light skinned immigrants weren’t considered white, but yet today, if you are light skinned then you are Caucasian, comma specifically (fill in the blank). It does make me wonder if someone “Caucasian” people have felt a loss of identity, similar to blacks losing their identity (What I mean in terms of origin, at one point blacks weren’t born in America, and there was a struggle of ‘Going back to Africa’ or ‘Staying because this is my homeland’ mentality between black people). In 11th grade I did some brief research on the mafia and lynching, and what I found astonishing was that Irish folks and other immigrants were lynch as much as black people were. Yeah, I knew that immigrants weren’t treated equally or kindly, but it didn’t really cross my mind that they too were lynched. I wished I could have seen the show, it seemed like it would have been very interesting and thought-provoking. I hope they will extend it to another weekend.
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