We’ve got an African American president in the White House, so that must mean all is well and good with the state of race relations in this country? Yeah, it’s not that simple. Consider that in January 2009, the month of President Obama’s inauguration, a Rasmssen poll showed that 70 percent of voters thought that race relations between blacks and whites were getting better. Yet the same poll two years later said just the opposite. Now just 38 percent of Americans think race relations are getting better, and 29 percent think they’re getting worse.

What happened? Atlanta playwright Janece Shaffer begins with the premise in her timely play “Brownie Points” that it’s at an individual level that racial divisions ultimately play out every day. Making its West Coast premiere at Taproot Theatre, “Brownie Points” makes the case that those divisions can never be solved without the day-to-day determination to not only keep their historical context in mind, but that only through ongoing conversations and shared experiences do we have a chance to overcome them.

Set in a backwoods cabin in rural Georgia, a group of five mothers leading a camping outing for a scout troop are forced to confront racial, religious and class differences that play out against a backdrop of a raging storm outside and close and uncomfortable quarters inside. Scene by scene it’s revealed that the shared challenges that each of the mothers face in trying to do what’s best for their kids can ultimately help create the possibility of understanding. Keep talking, keep working on it, the story emphasizes, and only then can the divisions start fading away.

But don’t think for a minute you’re in for a message-heavy story that makes it a chore to enjoy. The dramedy clocks in at 90 minutes without an intermission, but it absolutely flies by because it’s filled with laugh-out-loud moments. There are several lines that are guaranteed to get huge laughs, and it’s so full of humor that you sit in expectation of when it must turn serious. I don’t want to give away the most powerful scene in the play, but you’ll know when it hits because the word spoken will take your breath away. Karen Lund’s direction at this moment is absolutely dead on, because the word, and the story it comes from, is left to ring in the theater as you contemplate its power.

The cast of five women and their acting is outstanding:

• Faith Russell is spot-on as Deidre, the high-powered surgeon, who has to face every day as both an African American and a woman in a hospital where there aren’t many of either. You know from the time she rolls her suitcase down to the cabin that she’s someone who does not like to back down from anyone, so the center of the entire story is when she reveals the humiliation of when she was forced to do so.
• Amy Love plays Jamie, whose one-on-one with Deidre creates the turning point in the story for honest conversation to begin taking place. As a Jewish woman living in the Baptist-dominated South, Jamie brings a perspective that reveals the complexity of race and religion in our history. She also gets to deliver one of the funniest lines in the play.
• The role of Allison is critical, and somewhat thankless, because she’s the foil for the conflict that sets the entire story on its way. Casi Wilkerson brings the required depth to the role of a woman whose own burden in life is alluded to, but not talked about much, until she finally confronts her friends about it. After all, she seems to say, as long as we’re all speaking honestly, let’s actually speak honestly.
• Karen Ann Daniels has just the right touch as the wife of an ex-NBA star, Nicole, who tries to play the role of the peacekeeper, but has to ultimately back up Deidre in the task of helping the other mothers come to grips with the actual reality of what it still means to be an African American woman.
• Sue, played by Nikki Visel, is the always-working single mother who openly acknowledges her worry and guilt about being gone so much. Visel nails the character’s vulnerability when she admits relying on Nicole to let her know what’s going on with her daughter in school. It’s a key point that will be easy to miss as the story builds to a conclusion. Watch for it.

In many ways, the survey results mentioned earlier are striking as much for their results as what it says about how long it actually takes to overcome the harsh realities of past racial injustice. Today’s parents, those in their 30s, 40s and 50s, all grew up in an era of dramatic and positive legal changes to improve race relations, so it can be sobering to realize how far we still have to go.

“Living in Atlanta, it’s inevitable that race becomes a part of your life, so I wanted the play to start a conversation about it,” Shaffer said in an inteview last year. “I look at the older generation, and then I look at the younger generation, and they have completely different experiences with race. My generation, we’re the ones who are really straddling the fence, and sometimes I wonder if that doesn’t make us the most ill-equipped to deal with it.”

Brownie Points succeeds because Shaffer has crafted a humor-filled, but honest look at human relations that helps the audience reflect on their own daily experiences. So often conflict comes not from the overtness of our beliefs, but by our naive refusal to see how our actions and words could be seen differently by the other person.

WHEN: May 20‐ June18 (Wednesday‐Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; Friday‐Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday matinees, 2 p.m.)

WHERE: Taproot Theatre Company, 204 North 85th Street, Seattle, WA 98103

TICKETS: Tickets are available online at www.taproottheatre.org/buy‐tickets/ and through Taproot Theatre’s box office, in person or by phone at 206.781.9707.