Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge

Greig Sargeant and Ben Jalosa Williams play James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr., respectively, in a re-creation of the literary lions’ notorious 1965 televised debate about civil rights in front of an English student audience at the Cambridge Union. (The topic: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”) Conceived by Sargeant with Elevator Repair Service (Gatz), the piece is directed by John Collins; it concludes with an imagined scene, written by Sargeant and April Matthis, between Baldwin and his friend Lorraine Hansberry (Daphne Gaines).