US playwright Steven Leigh Morris’ White People is a play about American racial politics that has been reframed for a Balkan audience. Verity Healy explores the issues raised by the play around race and gender and looks at how you adapt a text for a different cultural context.
Written by US critic and playwright Steven Leigh Morris, Lear in Tulsa is play which tackles some knotty topics – race, bigotry and identity politics – through an American lens. Set in the city whose name is forever connected to the notorious 1921 massacre in which supremacists destroyed what was at the time one of the wealthiest Black communities in the US, it’s an attempt to evoke America’s complex contemporary racial politics. It’s not the most obvious play perhaps to be reframed for a Balkan audience, but that’s what Qendra Multimedia has done with White People, an adaption of the text with a director and cast from Kosovo.
Many of Morris’ past plays have tackled gender and racial issues or looked at the plight of minority groups and/or stereotyping. His style is one of biting satire, which nevertheless exposes the human frailties of the characters that flesh out his dramas. These elements are present in White People. a satire on racial politics in the performing arts in the US set in a semi-professional theatre which stands on the site of the former Black Wall Street, where the 1921 massacre took place.
Morris’ original play Lear in Tulsa focuses on six characters, both people of colour and white people. Lewis, the outgoing white artistic director, is directing King Lear, with himself in the titular role. When he learns that his replacement AD is a Black British gay woman, he spirals into panic mode about his casting choices. He has cast Goneril and Regan, Lear’s daughters, with Black actresses, and the kinder, younger daughter, Cordelia, with Priscilla, a white Texan. He’s worried thus will be seen as racist by the incoming AD and frets about his legacy, so he tries to persuade Priscilla to step away from the role of Cordelia and allow a Black woman to play her.
Qendra Multimedia were keen to stage Lear in Tulsa in Prishtina, the company’s artistic director Jeton Neziraj was worried it would seem too American in its original form and “open too many surprise boxes for audiences.” So Lear in Tulsa became White People, the cast scaled down from six characters to three and the narrative totally reframed through the eyes of the white characters, Lewis (played Shpëtim Selmani), Priscilla (Verona Koxha) and Doug (Bujar Ahmeti), the actor who has been case as the Duke of Cornwall. Qendra also worked with the play’s Balkan director, Besim Ugzmajli, to recontextualize it for a local audience by adding a scene which explored the treatment of Roma people in the region, a group who are often subject to racism in the Balkans.
In the original play, Morris had help from his friend, the black gay actor Tracey A. Leigh, who is also the artistic director of the Ensemble Theatre Studio in LA. She was able to assist with the structure of the play and check the authenticity of the dialogue, particularly the black AD and her partner – the AD role was actually written for her. None of this appears in White People. Morris also tells me that he originally wrote Lear in Tulsa to explore bigotry and the different forms it can take, the way accusation is sometimes taken as truth in movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as hypocrisy.
Morris admits in an email that he was worried that the changes would risk his original intent getting lost. But he states that ironically, he found that the rewrite “addressed different challenges” and that “Our era has become so literal and identitarian that I found people questioning my “right” — as an older white cis-gender male — to write a Black lesbian character, or People of Colour in general.” The reframing of the play through the lens of the white characters in some ways absolves him of this. It also makes a difference dramaturgically – characters were streamlined, subplots were done away with, and as a result, the structure became more taut. This was definitely the feeling of the original actors who put on a reading of White People in LA, having also read Lear in Tulsa first, he says.

White People, Qendra Multimedia
Now a three-hander, each character has much to say for themselves – especially Priscilla, who identifies non-binary and whose pronouns are they and them, but who struggles to get Lewis and Doug to respect them. The character of Priscilla, says Neziraj, is exploring the “need to be recognized as we feel”, which he describes as “the new novelty” but which is something that “we have to get used to” because what Priscilla is searching for “is the foundation of human freedom.” Priscilla’s motivations are also framed as ambiguous within the play. When Doug and Lewis purposefully forget to respect Priscilla’s pronouns, their angry responses, as portrayed by Koxha, are almost comically performative. It could be this overreaction comes from being forced to survive in a male cis-gendered world where Priscilla has little power, but Koxha also tells me that the character “exploits gender discourse as an opportunity to appear interesting and stay relevant in today’s world.” Priscilla indeed comes across as having these insecurities, but this also means that Priscilla defies easy analysis – and they authentically reflect the confusion that can permeate human beings when they navigate gender issues.
The character of the actor Doug meanwhile is the kind of character, says Ahmeti, who you can find in any country, not just the Balkans. He sees Doug as the kind of guy who shows up the others. But when Lewis asks Priscilla to step aside for the new black actor to play Cordelia, they refuse. Priscilla talks about equality, but only wants it if it does not disadvantage them. Though one could also argue that Priscilla, like all the actors, is similarly at the mercy of Lewis and his desires. They clearly see that he might be acting from a position of “woke supremacy” and self-righteousness by trying to “correct” his casting choices to protect his legacy.
Lewis is also more than the sum of his parts. He’s a complex character, according to Selmani, “and in addition to his ambiguities regarding this point, he also has other problems that accompany him”. For Neziraj, the character is representative of powerful people who have spent their life in theatre, but who are now challenged by “the demands of time” and changes they do not understand. Selmani presents him as someone who is vulnerable because of his position – and also because he is dying. Lewis has terminal cancer, and he just wants to make it to opening night and make a good show. At the same time he has more space and a greater ability to express his vulnerabilities than either Priscilla or Doug. Doug for example, says Ahmeti, is a character who remains loyal to his colleagues – when he learns of Lewis’ illness he is supportive, despite having initially walked out on the play due to feeling used and offended by the others’ behaviour. But this little narrative subtlety is overshadowed somewhat by Lewis’ story. And there’s truth in the fact that as more artistic leadership roles go to people of colour, it’s possible that the old guard might feel threatened or pushed out. Everyone wants change, just so long as they don’t have to be the ones to facilitate that change.
Morris has invested a lot in both versions plays – Lear in Tulsa and White People. He tells me he writes to explore ideas that “torment” him, rather than with any audience in mind, hoping to reach at least someone.
Is it problematic that the play no longer features the presence of people of colour? According to Ugzmajli, actors of colour in the Balkans are few and far between. The sane can be said for Roma actors. This makes it very difficult to stage the play in its original format. In a way the revision has forced Morris to double down on the themes in Lear in Tulsa and to further explore the confusion, hypocrisy, and inevitable white-centring that comes with societal shifts. Ugzmajli’s production connects this directly with white supremacy and the historic racism faced by people of colour in the US. At the start of the play, actors dressed as Ku Klux Klan members appear on stage. In the beginning, these figures cast horrifying shadows across the stage and stare out at the audience. By the end, when these figures return, they sit among the audience. Ugzmajli says he introduced the KKK to point out that racism exists everywhere and that theatre audiences are as guilty as anyone else when it comes to racism. This idea is nothing new. But by sitting in the audience, the KKK figures imply their passivity as they watch the play. And passivity can become complicity.
This complexity and ambiguity extends to the end of the play when Lewis dies. There is a coffin onstage and it is clear that this could be for Lewis – and everything that he represents. Nevertheless, Selmani writes, “the fight against racism should be the same everywhere regardless of how it appears. It consists of equality, in accepting human values and in believing in humanity. We need this. And I see this need as urgent.”
For more information, visit: Qendra.org
Verity Healey is a writer and critic published by The Stage, Open Democracy, Howlround, British Council, Calvert Journal, with editorial commissions for Belarus Free Theatre. She is a contributing author to Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance (pub 2022).