Post today's run through, playwright Aaron Weissman brought up a question of how race is portrayed in the show.
Since the show follows 5 white counterfeiters and Benjamin Franklin, are we presenting an appropriate collage of the American Experience? And do the few lines that refer to race do so in a way that doesn't come across as flippant or minimizing?
Fellow Dramaturg Brittany had some great thoughts on this in that the American dream is a very white dream and the whiteness of the cast or characters doesn't take away from the story we are trying to tell. The insertion of race issues at this point would not only be difficult but might verge on tokenization.
As to the lines in the text that do refer to race, there is the moment in which Freddy, the counterfeit confederate bill uses the N-word and immediately after Sam apologizes to the audience for him. The other reference to race comes via Ben Franklin in Ben in France. But it occurs during a moment when Ben is selling the virtues of the American Dream to France, and this act of selling the dream ends up as the inciting incident for when the American Dream becomes corrupted in the show.
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