Review: ‘People Where They Are’ in San Jose revisits tense civil rights history

DAVID JOHN CHÁVEZ | The Mercury News

PUBLISHED: February 7, 2024 at 9:30 a.m. | UPDATED: February 7, 2024 at 4:32 p.m.

San Jose Stage Company’s West Coast Premiere of PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE by ANTHONY CLARVOE. Directed BENNY SATO AMBUSH featuring (left to right) ESTRELLA ESPARZA-JOHNSON*, as EMMA, MICHAEL CHAMPLIN as NED , BRADY MORALES-WOOLERY* as MR. CARAWAN, TERRANCE AUSTIN SMITH* as JOHN, REBECCA PRINGREE as MAY, and CATHLEEN RIDDLEY* as MRS. CLARK. Now through February 25th, 2024 at The Stage. Tickets at www.thestage.org.Photo by DAVE LEPORI. *Actors’ Equity Association.

The danger for those gathered at Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School doesn’t merely exist outside the classroom’s walls.

This unique institution, which offers labor and civil rights leadership training, has its own risk. It’s one thing to sit across from an enemy, but in 1955, when Jim Crow was the law of the South, telling that person why they are the enemy just might be a death wish.

In San Jose Stage Company’s timely production of “People Where They Are,” penned with coruscating insight by Bay Area playwright Anthony Clarvoe, physical proximity is loaded with explosive peril. Each of the “students,” who are actually experts in the art of racism and marginalization, bring very specific necessities to the room, a safe, yet illegal space where expertise revealed through role-playing offers incendiary truths for the group to ponder.