Audiences often have a peculiar response to Greg Kalleres' darkly comic play, "Honky." Most of the time, he sees them laughing with hands over their mouths -- unsure of whether they should laugh out loud at the racial humor.
The play revolves around an advertising copywriter who’s afraid a commercial that he wrote led to a fatal encounter between two black teens over a pair of sneakers. Kalleres knows marketing well. He’s written and produced commercials for Nike and Brand Jordan, among other companies. His play is making its Los Angeles premiere after successful runs in New York City and San Diego.
Kalleres spoke with The Frame recently to explain how "Honky" addresses race and the role of marketing in our culture.
Interview Highlights:
Why did you decide to call the play "Honky?"
I did it because the play is so much about language and the power of words. The word honky — though it might have been a derogatory word for a white person — is now powerless. In the play, I posit that if there is one offensive word for a white person, it's racist. If you're a liberal-leaning white person, most likely the word racist keeps you up at night. The idea that anyone would think you're racist is so horrible that you will do anything to avoid being called that.
Prejudice is how we see people and bigotry is how you behave outwardly. Which were you trying to explore?
What I started being interested in with this play is language and how we talk to each other. We might have the best intentions in the world, but we might be ignorant. We might not be ignorant, but lack the language to express that. I wanted to write a play where language was the antagonist, where every character in some way or another was struggling with using the right words and being able to communicate.
There's an advertising jingle in the play that is loaded with language. You worked in advertising as a copywriter. Can you talk about the jingle and why it is so central to the story?
The thing that inspired me to write this play was my experience in advertising. I was a white guy writing for brands like Nike and Brand Jordan, where we were told that this specific shoe would be targeted at young African-Americans. You'd be in a room full of white people, and maybe one black person, and you're all discussing demographics. You talk about race a lot in advertising. I remember being 25 years old and writing these ads and thinking, This is weird.
As weird as it must have been for you in a group of white men talking about how to sell shoes to a black audience, it must have been really uncomfortable for the black man who was in that room. That's a perspective you're really trying to explore in the play, right?
Exactly, right. There's a [black] character named Thomas in the play and he's a shoe designer. He grew up well-educated in a wealthy white community and he's always been conflicted about that. His friends were in a poorer neighborhood and used to make fun of him, calling him "rich kid," or "honky" or things like that. Thomas always finds himself in rooms with white people. Throughout the play, and going back to the theme of language, there's this idea of coding — how Thomas talks when he's in a room with his white boss and how he talks when he's in a room with his sister. Something I wanted to explore was language and context — where you are and who you are talking to. It so often happened where there was that one black person in the room, and they're hearing all these questions. Every now and then something awkward would be said and everyone would look at this black person as if, Was that OK? It's the most horrible, awkward and comical thing to watch.
Do you see that black and white audiences have a different reaction to the material?
I have not watched who's specifically laughing at what. I will say that I have seen black audiences laugh much more freely than whites. Humor about race in black culture is much more common. They've been dealing with this for a long time. They know that, as painful as it is, it's also a place for humor — these things they deal with every day. For white people, there's more discomfort and it usually takes them until about scene three before they realize that it's okay to laugh.
What's clear in the play is that the characters are often uncomfortable. That feeling is also shared by the audience. Was it your intention that the audience squirm almost as much as the characters on stage?
Yeah, I think so. You never want to say you want to write a play where everyone is uncomfortable, because that's not the idea. I think it's a very funny play. There will be moments of squirming and then there's also an absurdist joke that you will hopefully laugh at. That discomfort is there because it's there all the time in life. These moments that are on stage I hope will reflect experiences that we all share when it comes to race. I've had audiences that were silent the entire play and I thought they hated it. Afterwards I would do a talk-back and I would say, "Gosh did you hate the play?" They would say, "No, I was laughing the whole time just with my hand over my mouth." I would watch the next night and it was true!
In this play, there is a pharmaceutical company that invented an imaginary drug called "Driscotol." What's the idea behind that?
"Driscotol" is a pill that posits that it can end and cure racism. But more important than the pill is the advertising of the pill. The advertising is: If you don't take it, you're a racist. Which is a brilliant advertising idea because no one will worry you're going to say something wrong. You won't have to watch what you say anymore because you can just say, It's cool, I'm on the pill. It's like the new, It's OK, I have a black friend.
"Honky," produced by Rogue Machine Theatre, is at The MET Theatre in Hollywood through June 12.