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Now that we have seen the passing of generations, from the so-called greatest to X, and possibly even Y and Z, we are at the beginning of another generation: one that is attracted to both social justice and social networking, able (so far) to juggle technological advances not seen since the Industrial Age of the nineteenth century and to mentor their parents in the zany Zeitgeist composed of advertising, culture and a mosaic of passing influences. Who are these people?

If music tells us something of this newest generation's thinking, art less so, and writing, well, apart from blogging, Twittering, and Facebooking, lesser still, it is heartening to be in the company of a young writer who neither talks up nor down to his characters or his audience. Stephen Karam, who was barely twenty-six when his first play, Speech & Debate, premièred in New York in 2007, is not writing in the vein of the expected: throughout his play (at the Unicorn, which opened on June 12, directed by Missy Koonce), when pivotal moments arise the characters fall silent. Partly, it represents teen inability to articulate what is truly at hand, yet it is also serves as a pause, like the moment between serves when a tennis player bounces the ball to gather concentration. Karam's characters are a talky trio, but they know when words are not enough.

Language is everything in Speech & Debate. The play opens with new transfer to a Salem, Oregon high school, a friendless gay African-American named Howie (Tosin Morohunfola), in a chat room where he hooks up with an anonymous older man. When a second student, the shy Solomon (Doogin Brown), a self-conscious "reporter" as he insists on being described, stumbles across the Internet correspondence he is incensed--yet also views the story as a big break. (The mystery man is someone high up in the high school.) Solomon's teacher (a hearty Kathleen Warfel), worn down by his constant demands to publish controversial subject matter in the school paper, persuades him to take part in a newly established Speech & Debate club. If it is meant to preoccupy him, his poor teacher is in for a rude awakening.

The club's team leader, Diwata (played supremely by Lauretta Pope), is no less of a misfit (she sends out podcasts, it seems, to herself, and obsesses about Mary Warren, the accused witch in that other Salem play, The Crucible). But Diwata's self-confidence and ambition draws all three outsiders into a circle that for all its clichés of self-esteem actually feels honest onstage. Diwata needs Solomon and Howie as much as they need her; that none of them knows it for much of the play is unsurprising. What earns this comedy its marks is how subtly Karam's writing pulls back the stereotypes of each character. Despite his namesake, Solomon's wisdom is directed at everyone but himself; his ambivalent sexual orientation is mirrored by Howie's openness: when Diwata gets a harebrained scheme to involve them all in a group performance (which may or may not involve Solomon's disclosure of criminal activities) as their Speech & Debate presentation, the play threatens to dissolve into either Judd Apatow slapstick or John Hughes über-sentimentality. In fact, it shies away from both, finding its feet on a middle ground between acceptance and wariness.

 The play moves along, courtesy of loud-music-and-club-lighting blackouts between each scene. And as ever, it is a delight to see how much imagination can be poured into a small stage (in this case, a mostly bare one as well, with the props stashed in oblong boxes that resemble nothing, so they can be anything: a seat, a wall, a stage on the stage). The three young actors, mostly playing only a few years earlier when they were really in school, have a tough job: how to communicate through characters that are not versed in communicating. At the beginning, Solomon's teacher asks him why he does not talk with his parents about sex; later Howie and Diwata ask the same question. Much of what transpires between the three is not in the script, but in the acting. Ensemble acting need not be a tour de force to be convincing; the audience (mostly the over-fifty set) I sat with was thoroughly convinced: they laughed as loudly as they sat silently when the writing called for it.

 The idea of outing someone, whether a private individual or a public name, is, if thoughtfully considered, a difficult task, something not easily to be toyed with. Speech & Debate may use contemporary settings and situations to make its theme bankable; what I find more intriguing is how unraveled the ending is. Through various machinations, many quite funny and inspired (especially the final musical number), each of the teens finds some solace in his or her decision to be his or herself; and yet. When Solomon advances the idea to Howie that they might hang out as friends, it is not like ordering up a Smoothie. Something is left to debate, something not so simple as Googling to get an immediate answer.

REVIEW
The Unicorn Theatre
Speech & Debate
Written by Stephen Karam
Directed by Missy Koonce
Running through July 12
Call or visit the website for performance days and times
Jerome Stage at the Unicorn Theatre
3828 Main St., KCMO. 
For tickets call 816-531-7529 or online at www.unicorntheatre.org.

By Steve Shapiro

Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.

As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.

A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups.