Laughing and thinking: ‘Pass Over’ tackles blistering topics with humor at Stage Left Theater

While observing from the audience section of Spokane’s Stage Left Theater during a recent rehearsal of Antoinette Nwandu’s politically blistering play “Pass Over,” director Malcolm Pelles challenged his two main actors onstage to set aside their scripts and just improvise.

Standing on a stage transformed into a barren city street corner, the character Moses, played by Dahveed Bullis, appeared to notice something off in the distance. “That’s one of the po-po, man.”

Kitch, the other character, played by Matt Slater, glowered in a frightened tone, “What’s he doin’?”

“He’s just sittin’ down there trying to make quota or some …” Moses said, shaking his head. “Looking for ‘suspicious activity.’ ”

Moses pretended to clear static on a police radio and said, “I’d like to report some paranormal Black-tivity.”

Both men cackled with laughter. “You know, there’s billionaires going up in space now?” Kitch asked. “They gon’ gentrify space.”

“There goes the neighborhood,” Moses chuckled.

That Bullis and Slater could so quickly and wholly inhabit their characters – all their riffs and profanities, clowning and joking, yearning and camaraderie – bodes well for the play’s opening night Friday at Stage Left.

“Pass Over’s” powerful message, and its overarching magic, relies on the friendship between two young Black men living in fear of being murdered by police. Like Kafka’s bugs, they are trapped in a racist system, squirming under the glare of a lonely streetlamp, pining throughout the play to “pass over,” and off, their perilous neighborhood block.

“ ‘Pass Over’ is this kind of brilliant mashup of Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and the Exodus story from the Bible mixed in with street language and poetry,” Pelles said.

“It seems so simple, just two guys, hanging out on a street corner, but the play tackles so many larger issues … police brutality, overpolicing, racial profiling, anti-Black vigilantism. … It has so many poignant moments, but it’s also hilarious.”

Pelle said his direction leans hard into the comedic aspects of the play.

“We cast really charismatic, funny actors, and so I just wanted to use their gifts and put on a good show so audiences who come to see this will laugh and be entertained, but also will have a lot to think about when they leave.”

Nwandu’s material is in good hands with director Pelles, 44, who is a professional playwright and filmmaker with a master’s in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a bachelor’s in filmmaking from Florida State University.

Pelles, who teaches screenwriting at Eastern Washington University, has a long history of directing scripts exploring themes of contemporary urban politics, culture and human relationships.

Often lacing his own satire with humor, Pelles wrote for and ran his own theater company in Washington, D.C., for six years. Later, when he lived in L.A., he wrote comedy sketches for CBS Entertainment’s Diversity Showcase.

Slater, who plays the buffoonish character of Kitch, said it excited him that Pelles was pumping up the humor of the play. Slater just released a new album in March with his punk band the Smokes, but his background includes improv and stand-up comedy in clubs across the country.

“My improv instructor used to say, ‘If you can make people cry, you can make people laugh even harder,’ ” Slater said. “The heavy, poignant moments (in ‘Pass Over’) are a lot to deal with, so the comedy makes it a little easier for the audience to swallow.”

In another prophetic piece of casting, local playwright and actor Bullis plays the character Moses, whose seeming job in the play is to lead both men in “passing over” into the Promised Land. He plays the wiser older brother role with an almost spiritual mission. It seems fitting that Bullis once studied to be an English or history teacher and at one point a pastor.

“I’d heard that this was the first show to open on Broadway in New York after the pandemic, and I’d heard that Stage Left had done a staged reading a couple of years ago,” Bullis said. “But I didn’t know what the play was about.”

When Bullis read the play, he was floored.

“This play is very much a Rorschach, where everybody will look at the same ink blot, and everyone will take something different out of it,” Bullis said. “I’m fascinated to hear what people think after they see it.

“Being Black in Spokane is hard. It was The Spokesman itself that put out an article a couple of years ago that showed that Black people are five times as likely to be arrested in Spokane, twice as likely to experience excessive force, and even though Black people only make up 2% of the population, 15% of the population in the county jail is Black.”

“This show is an invitation to ask, ‘What am I doing?’ ” Bullis said. “ ‘Do I have a young person, of color, whom I’m mentoring?’ Go to the Carl Maxey Center and volunteer to help an adult, be a part of something.”

Pelles believes that “Pass Over” will leave audiences “with a feeling of hope.”

“For people who are engaged in the work of justice and to change things for the better, I think this play has the potential to inspire and to re-engage people,” he said.

Pelles added that no matter what, he has been telling the cast that merely opening this play in Spokane is already a big win.

“My understanding is there are not a lot of Black shows with majority Black casts and Black playwrights performed in this town,” Pelles said. … “Hopefully, this will help usher in a change, and if it doesn’t, well at least we got this one through.”

Arts and entertainment correspondent Audrey Overstreet is vice president of the board of directors for Stage Left Theater.