America’s Argument Against Racism
Joseph Pearson in conversation with New York’s Elevator Repair Service about »Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge«

Actor Greig Sargeant had a family friend who always said he should play the novelist James Baldwin on-stage. »Try to find something«, he insisted, and so Sargeant scoured interviews and books, and streamed documentaries and video footage, until by accident he came across the 1965 debate between the novelist and the arch-conservative founder of the »National Review«, William F. Buckley.

Sargeant tells me, »As I watched, I was immediately connected to it. I’m a black gay artist looking at another black gay artist talking about a subject that has defined my life: the experience of being black in America. Wow, this happened in 1965. And now, basically, nothing has changed. And––wow––this is a compelling piece of theatre.«

Soon, it became the source material for the theatre company Elevator Repair Service’s production of »Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge« at the New York Public Theater.

Baldwin had already made his name with his 1956 queer novel set in Paris, »Giovanni’s Room«. In 1963, »The Fire Next Time« was published, a book of essays arguing the centrality of race in American history. Baldwin’s English editors suggested interviews and debates in the UK. They landed on the Cambridge Union as a venue, one of the world’s great fora for public debate. Other conservatives passed on the invitation before Buckley accepted to debate Baldwin on the question if the American Dream was only possible at the expense of the country’s Black population. The event packed 700 people into the chamber that normally fits less than half that number.

There could not be a greater theatrical contrast between the men––something Elevator Repair Service has seized on. Baldwin was black, queer, grew up poor, and wasn’t college educated. Buckley, played by Ben Jalosa Williams, was white, heterosexual, and Yale-educated, with an almost comically antiquated accent.

The latter wrote approvingly of South African apartheid and the continuation of segregation in the US South. A central plank of Buckley’s argument was that he radically doubted that racism was structural. He argued for »meritocracy« and that Black Americans had created their own poverty. Buckley would later be called a »Crypto-Nazi« by novelist Gore Vidal––and Buckley loathed the latter for being gay. (One cannot help but wonder whether Buckley’s embodiment of American privilege in a starched shirt was also a form of compensation, as he grew up Catholic and Spanish-speaking).

John Collins, the director of »Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge«, tells me that there’s a reason to pay attention to Buckley’s arguments, »not because they are convincing but because they are eerily familiar. People are still making the same arguments now, usually not as articulately. But the ideas––the purchase these bad ideas still have––are important, with Trump and his attacks on DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion]. But today, we have it in a horrible monster version, the idea that if the system were merit-based, it wouldn’t even include Black people«.

Collins and his team are no strangers to verbatim theatre––that is, documentary theatre that uses the found words of real people. Their piece »Arguendo« (2013) is a Supreme Court transcript about exotic dancers claiming their First Amendment rights to perform naked. Likewise, »Baldwin and Buckley« is almost word for word the text from the debating chamber at the University of Cambridge.

I ask John how the constraint of verbatim can be productive, and he replies, »As an ensemble, as in many of our pieces, we give ourselves a problem to solve on stage. From letting the raw elements interact, we see what kind of alchemy occurs. We don’t like to rewrite into a more palatable form. We all thought that people could listen to this exactly as it was said then, today, so it exists in two places at once. Hear it as it was and hear it right now, reverberating in the current culture. A few things about the language of 60s, some of the words they used, are awkward now. But we are also interested in friction and dissonance«.

But even with the same words, the delivery can make the difference. I was intrigued that the company decided not to give Buckley his immediately identifiable (hammy) elitist accent, although Ben Jalosa Williams »makes a great impersonation of Buckley«. Collins tells me, »We don’t want to be accidentally reassuring there is nothing dangerous about him. That he’s just a cartoon, a joke. He’s not a joke«. (In this way, sometimes »real« does not appear real on stage; a change in the delivery allows the audience to believe more.)

But the process of recreating the scene of debate has a sense of a resurrection, and I suggest to Greig and John that now is precisely the moment when we need James Baldwin to come back from the dead––to reappear in the flesh and save us all. Trapped in a film, book, or other historical document, his power might otherwise be muted.

Greig continues, »It’s a joy to channel James Baldwin, so brilliant and articulate in a way I’m not. He’s given me a voice, and one to so many people of colour when he breaks down intellectually what it is like to be black in the US. This debate happened in 1965. We need to reiterate the fact that things really have not changed that much. To remind people of the arguments in this piece has an urgency we didn’t have before«.

John tells me, »Baldwin has an honesty we need to live by if we are going to survive the horror of the US right now. We need to cling to the truth and show it. It’s very meaningful to hear this debate, to hear James Baldwin actively fighting for the right side«.

He continues, »What’s great for people in Germany to know is that Baldwin represents America and the American ideal for us. He is what America should be. He so beautifully takes apart Buckley’s arguments, his ignorance and racism. It’s so important to know now that for 60 years, and now, there has been a powerful argument against racism coming from inside of America. I am happy to remind people in Europe of that, and to remind myself«.

Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge