James Baldwin is the greatest American writer. Period. Even more so during Black History Month 2025.
Among Baldwin’s many, many gifts was prescience. As a gay Black midcentury man, he wrote about the many discriminations in his own time that are, sadly, also applicable in our current moment. Baldwin eviscerated his era's systemic racism and TimeLine Theatre has resurrected this vital history by staging the famous television debate between Baldwin and the conservative movement’s godfather, William F. Buckley Jr.
This production commemorates the original debate almost 60 years later to the day (and also coincides with the Theatre School’s 100th anniversary), and sounds like modern attacks on affirmative action and DEI initiatives. The American Civil War never really ended; it just cowered behind white sheets and in boardroom whispers, percolating underneath our society as a debilitating cancer. The US Civil War 2.0 began on January 20, 2025, so this piece arrives just in time.
Adapter and director Christopher McElroen started developing Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley after the assassination of George Floyd in 2020 with actors Teagle F. Bougere as Baldwin and Eric T. Miller as Buckley. The production toured the US and UK before coming to DePaul University’s Cortelyou Commons, a 1929 Gothic structure, performed in a rectangle surrounded by chairs with the actors wearing tuxedos (costumes by Sally Dolembo and Zach Grasee).
This setting evokes England’s Cambridge Union, where the original 1965 debate was held in front of students, broadcast live on the BBC and later in the US. Here, the faces of white Christian men, portraits of DePaul’s religious leaders, circle the room as the players, including two DePaul students who represent Cambridge students, as this question is discussed:
“Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
As in the real debate, this 90-minute doppelganger play begins with two students presenting each side of the debate question, here portrayed by a rotating cast of Theatre School students. One defends the importance of Blacks in American culture, citing Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the contributions of music and jokes, and the use of “the blood of negroes in two world wars.”
Some bristle at the “hideously loaded” debate query. “White supremacy came from Europe” is another observation, using a “bloody catalog of repression.” Then, Baldwin states that “it comes as a great shock…to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you.” Bougere captures Baldwin’s clear-eyed and accessible oratory style, coupled with his weariness to continuously fight to defend “my sweat” as a matter of historical record. He makes meaningful eye contact with the audience in this house light-lit space.
Baldwin also notes that subjugation begins with the color of the skin and accelerates from there, pondering what must the man be thinking who tortures another human being with a cattle prod. Even though we live “in a society of rules made by men,” why is a ninth of the population still considered beneath whites, he wonders. He defends his sense of self as “beyond the savage.”
Miller captures Buckley’s sneering condescension, echoed throughout today’s white supremacist and Christian nationalist circles. Aping Buckley’s sense of entitlement alongside his comical victimhood (despite every societal advantage), Miller presents this historic “Karen” claiming that “Black skin is not an argument” and that whites shouldn’t have to be exposed to the “luridities of oppression” and “jettison an entire civilization” in pursuit of equal rights. Many of the conservative’s arguments mention and punctuate “civilization,” indicating that Buckley did indeed consider African Americans to be savages.
Buckley’s primary argument is that “US negroes have it better than most in the rest of the world.” As played, his words show him to be jealous of Baldwin to boot, seething that the Black writer is “the talk of the town.” Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time was the first essay collection to spend 41 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, as Buckley published a defense of Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt hearings, an editorial for his National Review titled “Why the South Must Prevail,” and spent two years working for the CIA. (Dramaturgy by Maren Robinson, Ashly DeMay, Katherine Shuert and Omari Sloan.)
The talkback with the director and performers is an important part of the evening following the energetic, intermission-less performance. There’s been much buzz about finding community to debrief and grieve as our present democracy circles the drain and revisiting this important debate is a welcome panacea.
On opening night, audience members on passed microphones made observations including that this show is “painfully relevant” and that American whites continue to “fight to maintain the status quo.” One noted that even after his triumphant rhetoric, Baldwin wouldn’t have been able to catch a cab outside the hall while Buckley could, echoing the massive rolling back of American civil rights in the last two weeks. Shock shared is trauma lessened and this post-show discussion helps.
TimeLine’s mission is to face history, always an important posture, but now crucial to remember reality as the truth is being rewritten, sanitized and whitewashed by a racist minority. Baldwin sums up his side of the argument with the evergreen observation, “What we are now facing is the result of what we’ve done.”
Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley by TimeLine Theatre Company, in partnership with the Theatre School at DePaul University, continues through March 2 at DePaul’s Cortelyou Commons, 2324 W. Fremont. Tickets are $62-75, available at 773-281-8463 x6. TimeLine’s new Uptown space is slated to be opened in 2026.
For more information on this and other productions, see theatreinchicago.com.
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