Review: ‘Black Bone' by Definition Theatre looks at race and artificial intelligence

Chicago Tribune

3 days ago

How will the rise of artificial intelligence impact the place of race in American politics and culture?
Not at all, might be the most obvious answer, but a new play from Definition Theatre in Hyde Park suggests that the truth may end up being a lot more complicated, especially once carbon-based humans are forced to make space for increasingly pervasive AI representations. We're already familiar with white people who pretend to be people of color, usually for a perceived personal benefit. 'Black Bone,' written by Tina Fakhrid-Deen, suggests that such a deception might soon be a whole lot easier to pull off.
'Black Bone' has come out of Definition's Amplify Series, a development process for new work. I should note at the outset that Fakhrid-Deen has packed more levels into this play than it can easily withstand and, at almost two hours without an intermission, the show is way too long. But it's certainly a provocative piece of writing and a new work that I hope Definition further develops.
Set some ways into the future, the outer frame of the show is a futuristic and over-the-top game show, setting the audience up for the kind of heightened reality that recalls George C. Wolfe's classic satire, 'The Colored Museum.' Adding to that, Fakhrid-Deen has added a video screen that plays spoof news broadcasts and commercials, as generated by artificial intelligence.
But I think what Fakhrid-Deen wanted to write about here was a satire of higher education, focused on how Black academics have to operate in predominantly white institutions and how that may or may not change for the better or the worse in years to come. The TV show frame doesn't bring much to the party here in my view and, frankly, it's too easy and familiar a target and ends up diluting the potential force of some of the fresher content.
But once we're firmly in the scenes set in the faculty lounge and actors like the excellent Martasia Jones, Marlene Slaughter and Matthew Lolar-Johnson get fired up in director Carla Stillwell's very alive production, the show finds its feet. It's really exploring a timeless debate: the merits of working within the system versus taking it down. But it's also fresh and confident writing. If 'Black Bone' could lose the outer frame and the video screen and just explore how race will impact the practice of higher education when academics have to worry about 'professor bots' rather than adjuncts taking over, this play would really attract some attention.
Even more interestingly, Fakhrid-Deen has set up a world where America's current political polarization is just the beginning. In 'Black Bone,' America is riven not by the debate over reparations but over the consequence of that initiative having taken place, especially in an AI-capable world where race now can be performed far more easily for individual gain and truly lived experience gets all too easily forgotten. It's certainly a dystopian vision of the future but a credible one. If Fakhrid-Deen just commits to the truth of what she wants to say in those scenes and loses the rest, she could have a 90-minute drama filled with fresh thinking about how our ever-contested present morphs into an inevitably similar future.
Review: 'Black Bone' (2.5 stars)
When: Through June 29
Where: Definition Theatre, 1160 E. 55th St.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $15-$35 (plus fees) at definitiontheatre.org