Dissensual performances of race and community in Claudia Rankine’s The White Card and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview

Abstract

The White Card (2018) and Fairview (2018), two recent plays by contemporary Black female playwrights Claudia Rankine and Jackie Sibblies Drury, raise questions about how overcoming socially constructed racial categories presupposes the idea of a (theatrical) community as the conceptual framework that informs theater’s political efficacy. As such, The White Card and Fairview register the inherent fissures and cleavages that result from various processes of racialization structuring the theatrical performance itself. This article suggests that the plays by Rankine and Drury create a form of theatrical dissensus that fundamentally disrupts how issues of race and racism are rendered tangible in theatrical performances.