Natalie Bull

Prof Wright

THA 1000

25 November 2020

Midterm on Pipeline

Pipeline, a play premiering at the Lincoln Center Theatre in 2017, promotes the message

of struggling students and parents trying to do what’s best for their kids. The story follows

public-school teacher Nya and her son Omari, as Nya struggles to find a solution to her sons

uncontrolled anger whilst dealing with problems of her own. After both reading and viewing the

play, I bring my input on the effectiveness of the strategies used in the performance and

Dominique Morisseau as a playwright. The overarching themes displayed in this play have a

bigger purpose for students who are dealing with more than they let on in the classroom.

Spectators and reviewers who have witnessed or read this play can all agree that this is an issue

that needs more representation in the school systems to support students like Omari.

Morisseau is the playwright of Pipeline meaning she is the author of this play. The

playwright has many tasks and tools in order to create a play including a subject matter, purpose,

point of view, sources, and rewriting (Wright). Morisseau created her storyline by developing the

characters Omari and Nya to establish her story’s purpose with the help of a dramatic structure

and dramatic characters. Her purpose and characters come together help us to understand why

she wrote this play which is to help understand the lives behind each student and the struggles

they face. This play is significant to her identity as a black woman growing up in Detroit getting

an education because she’d see other families around her failing to thrive in this academic

environment. Her mother worked in a public school in Michigan for 40 years, so she was an
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inspiration to write this piece through her perspective seeing this current problem. The home

lives of these students in a developing city is a less talked about problem that needs a solution.

The play’s structure follows the home life and school life of Omari and his mother showing the

misunderstandings that teachers and the school system make in understanding and disciplining

these students. The structure’s elements of plot were easy to follow, and the climax, “The point

of highest tension in a play” (Wright), was easily identifiable and enjoyable to read. The way this

play was written with overlapping scenes and dialogue between the characters was effective in

proving the constant thinking and worrying going on in the minds of Nya and Omari. This

helped set the mood of each scene and set the purpose.

The directing of this piece was outstanding and brought this play to life exactly if not more

realistic than envisioned when reading the play. The director’s job is to, “oversee all of the

elements of a production and work with the other creatives to bring about a cohesive and

compelling event for the audience to witness” (Wright).The actors were well picked by this

director and fit the roles precisely. The location changes throughout each setting where dramatic

and well executed where I felt like I was watching a tv show. When reading the play, I thought

the projections of images and videos would be distracting and take me from the moment, but

when watching the directing and quality of images, videos, and sound, it felt truly like the setting

or the thoughts of each character. The use of the entire back wall for the image projections was

well executed and felt better than being just displayed on a screen in the background. Design

elements used throughout any performance of theatre consist of music, speech, masks,

storytelling, costumes, etc. (Wright). The effectiveness of the design elements used in this play

was a main drive in the emotion and connection the audience felt with each character and the

setting. One of the strongest design elements that was used was lighting, the dramatic changes in
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lighting depending on the setting and if Omari was heard or saw in the back of Nya’s mind

helped depict the spiraling insanity she felt in that moment. The lighting drew my attention to

changes in the scenery and emotion felt. The minimalism of the set design helped center the

attention solely on the actors and the story they were conveying.

The acting in this play was dramatic and exactly how the characters were meant to be

portrayed. The emotion put into Nya with her blocking, derived from drawing grids to indicate

where things took place, and actions helped portray the distressed mother worrying about her son

and dealing with the stresses of being a public-school teacher. I noticed in the acting their

dramatic facial expressions and consistent eye contact with one another which helped enhance

my experience of the play as I was fully involved in the scene and forgot they were just playing a

character and weren’t actually in this situation. Their commitment to the roles with Nya crawling

on her hands and knees begging Omari to talk to her, collapsing on the floor in a panic attack,

helped bring her character to life. At the end of the play, Omari has learned his mistakes through

talking to his mother, Jasmine, and his father. After retelling the story each time and seeing the

distress it put his mother in, he chose to write out a list of instructions that his mother Nya was so

desperately wanting from him. She’d receive advice and instructions from everyone but him, so

this was her last resort. When she wakes up in the hospital, she’s surprised and proud that Omari

had complied his list of nine instructions. He compares them to scripture, “the sacred writings of

another religion” (Oxford). The first instruction on his list: hear me out (Morisseau), allows for

him to get his side of the story through and allow him mentally to know his limits before

something like this happens again. I agree with this instruction and believe it’s important for

student’s voices to be heard because they know their own limits while a teacher may not. His

fourth instruction: know when to keep pushing, let’s Nya know that Omari hears her and
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understands that the school is just trying to help him. I agree with this statement because every

student must be pushed in order to succeed. Omari left his tenth and final instruction blank as he

couldn’t think of anymore. If I had the opportunity to write the final instruction I would say:

know that I am human. Teachers need to better understand that each of their students is dealing

with something everyday that isn’t seen. Omari is dealing with the struggle of not having a

connection with his dad and having a single mother who is constantly worrying if he’ll even be

alive tomorrow. Remembering that everyone is human and dealing with their own struggles is

important.

Audience members of live performances can agree that Pipeline moves you emotionally.

Critics, “a person who judges the merits of literary, artistic, or musical works, especially one

who does so professionally” (Oxford), watch and review performances such as Pipeline and give

their opinion for readers to hear. One review by Ben Brantley with The New York Times said,

“’Pipeline’ lacks the driving coherence of Ms. Morisseau’s earlier work. But it confirms her

reputation as a playwright of piercing eloquence. She bravely and repeatedly dives into the

muddled shadows of social issues often presented in cold statistics and cleanly drawn graphs”

(Brantley). This review agrees with what I’ve been stating by mentioning the social issues and

real statistics. It brings a new perspective of comparing Morisseau’s work to her older work. This

review would incline me to attend or read this play since social issues are important to me,

especially the ones that need more recognition such as this one. Another review is from Frank

Scheck at Hollywood Reporter said, “But it’s also because the playwright strains too hard for a

poeticism that feels unearned and unnatural to a majority of the characters. While there are some

powerful moments, Pipeline overall fails to come to life” (Scheck). I disagree and agree with this

one as the focus on poetry is overdone in this play and becomes redundant after we know the
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message they’re trying to send by including it. I don’t agree that this play fails to come to life as

the actors touched the audience’s heart and brought this issue into the forefront through a real

storyline. The connection between these characters and actors was strong enough to make us feel

for them and their situation. After reading this review, I would not feel inclined to watch or read

Pipeline as it seems boring and repetitive. I notice in these reviews that they retell the story

through their eyes, what messages they personally take out of the play, and how well they think

it was executed to inform their readers if this is worth their time. During her performances,

Morisseau wants her audience to enjoy her work and not feel restricted. In each playbill, “a

poster announcing a theatrical performance” (Oxford), she includes her “Rules of Engagement”

which are a list of things her audience is allowed to do during the play. This mainly includes the

allowance of response noise in the theater such as laughing, responding, and preaching. She

explains that this engages the actors and brings them further into character. These rules

effectively involve the audience and allows for them to relax and not feel they will be shunned

for their natural responses to how the performance makes them feel. This adds to the experience

by letting the audience enjoy themselves and be a part of the performance in responding to what

they like and don’t like during each act.

Morisseau as well as the director of the performance, both were able to successfully spread

this underlying message that’s relevant in every school system with the help of multiple design

principles. The actors, stage directions, and elements created a coming of age play that shares an

important story that even critics can relate to. Morisseau as a playwright, took her mother as an

example and brought the lives of her many students to life to bring attention to the injustice they

face in this system. Through listening and learning from one another, students facing difficulties

in life can be humanized and not cycled into the prison system. This play’s message relays the
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hope that teachers learn to listen to their students and realize they all struggle, will keep these

students away from violent decisions and negative consequences.

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Works Cited

Brantley, Ben. "Review: A Mother Fervently Tries to Protect Her Son in ‘Pipeline’." The New

York Times, 10 July 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/theater/pipeline-review.html.

Morisseau, Dominique, writer. Pipeline. 2017. Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz2017.

Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2020, www.oed.com/.

Scheck, Frank. "Review: A Mother Fervently Tries to Protect Her Son in ‘Pipeline’." The

Hollywood Reporter, 2020, www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/pipeline-theater-

review-1019647.

Wright, Brandon. 2020…

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