I tremendously respect and admire playwrights who bring an immediacy of personal reactions to their stories of racial conflict and tension within the theatre. The Stratford Festival’s recent production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” is only one example that comes to my mind. I had read in earlier press releases that Marco Ramirez’s “The Royale” deals with racial tensions in the Jim Crow era.  As I sat quietly waiting for the play to begin, I wondered if audiences are becoming saturated to the point where we feel nothing about this theme?

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