“I was really, really, really angry and I didn’t know how to get that out,” says playwright Carleton Bluford. It was summer 2020, and Bluford, like many in the U.S., was saddened and enraged by the murder of George Floyd. Needing an outlet, he channeled his pent-up emotions into a journal entry. “That’s what I do. I start writing.” 

Initially, Bluford’s writing wasn’t meant to leave the pages of his journal, let alone be performed on stage. That changed, though, when Jerry Rapier, Plan-B Theatre’s artistic director and Bluford’s longtime collaborator and mentor, asked him if he had anything he was working on. After Bluford shared his writing, Rapier encouraged him to turn it into a play. Rapier is now directing his play The Clean-Up Project, which will premiere on Feb. 17 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.

Though The Clean-Up Project is deeply, even bruisingly, personal for Bluford, the premise won’t be mistaken for straightforward memoir. The play is set in a post-apocalyptic near-future America where African-Americans have militarized and taken over the country. A Black couple (Latoya Cameron and Chris Curlett), overwhelmed by reality, have retreated to their home in what Bluford calls “their own kind of quarantine.” The couple is forced to face the issues they’ve been avoiding, though, when their white friends (Matt Sincell and Sarah Walker) come to visit, sparking a raw, unfiltered conversation about race.

For Bluford, this reversal in power dynamics was intentionally chosen to inspire empathy in the audience, especially from white people. “I wanted to give the audience a sense of what African-Americans and BIPOC people feel on a daily basis,” he explains. In the nearly two years since Floyd’s death inspired global protest, Bluford has noticed a fading interest in racial justice. The Clean-Up Project’s premiere, in the middle of Black History Month, serves as a reminder of the everyday racism that millions still face daily in the U.S. “[For] a lot of us, this is our normal life,” Bluford says. “We don’t go on from that. This is what we deal with every day.”  

Transforming his private writing into the speculative fiction The Clean-Up Project eventually became, Bluford workshopped his play with other artists at Plan-B. “The play started to take shape as I took in other people’s suggestions and observations and points of view,” he says. Developing his unpolished, imperfect work with others was a new, sometimes uncomfortable experience for Bluford, but the process of writing this play caused him to let go of his preconceived notions. In 2015, his play Mama was also produced at Plan-B Theatre, which made him the first Black playwright to premiere a play in Utah. “I very much at that point was a writer very concerned with how people would perceive my work, how they perceive me, if they get it, if they like it,” he recalls. “At this point in my life and my career, I’m not so much concerned with what people think of my work.”

In the seven years since Mama, Bluford has grown more accustomed to speaking out, openly and unapologetically, about race in his life and his work. “To be completely honest, I’ve struggled with sharing how I feel all the time,” he says. “I’ve spent most of my life walking into rooms, speaking a certain way, acting a certain way so that everyone in the room felt comfortable or at ease.” He also accepted that talking about these issues in an unfiltered way would make some people uncomfortable, a process he calls “realizing what it feels like to have my own voice and my own space.” Bluford, who is also the production’s assistant director, says it’s been difficult to watch his personal feelings laid bare on stage over and over again, but he’s still looking forward to sharing his work with audiences. “I’m excited that I’ve written and now I’m now a part of a piece of theater that gets to do what I always wanted to do with the arts—hopefully change people’s hearts and minds.”

The Clean-Up Project will be performed at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center from Feb. 17-27 and streaming online from Feb. 23-27. For tickets and more information, visit Plan-B Theatre’s website. Read more theater stories from Salt Lake.

I’ll say one thing about the cast of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City: this group has an almost impressive talent for ignoring what’s right in front of them. We’re now at the penultimate episode of this wild, glorious season, and the Housewives, through a combination of binge drinking and sheer delusion, have managed to spend all of their time on petty fights while there are about a dozen glaring (and more interesting!) issues that everyone is completely ignoring.

Really, this season should have been about two people: Mary and Jen. When one of your friends is wanted by the FBI for defrauding the elderly and another one of your friends married her step-grandpa to inherit the leadership of an alleged cult, it seems like it would be hard to focus on anything else. The other cast members, though, have mutually decided to maintain an uneasy status quo with Jen. This can be frustrating, but I understand why. Nobody has any way to definitively know what Jen did or didn’t do (though the evidence does not look good for her,) and between a desire to believe their friend is innocent and TV contracts requiring them to spend time with her, most of the women have decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, there are moments where the group almost addresses the many, many reasons to be wary of Mary, a reverend who lacks even the most basic instincts of human kindness. But, partly because nobody can actually focus and partly because Mary will just deny everything anyway, all of this is neglected too. Instead, we get a protracted, exhausting investigation into Meredith’s dad’s memorial and a deep dive into the rapidly crumbling 10-year friendship between her and Lisa.  

I may be disappointed by all of the mess left unexplored (remember the little nugget that Meredith and Jen may have slept with the same man?!) but what we do have in this episode is so deliciously weird that I can’t complain too much. We pick up this week with Lisa’s furious hot mic rant, where she unleashed a torrent of every nasty thing she could think of about Meredith. When Heather, Whitney, Jennie and Jen go check on Lisa, she makes it clear that she feels everyone, not just Meredith, is to blame for not properly defending her. She packs a season’s worth of frustrations into one meltdown while security stands outside the door just in case. (Give everyone behind the scenes on this show a raise.) She threatens to pack up and leave in the middle of the night—as pretty much every cast member has done—and everyone besides Jen makes the mistake of following Lisa into the bathroom. She brandishes a hair dryer Brad-Pitt-in-Thelma-&-Louise style and yells, “I am fucking richer than all of you; I don’t need to fucking be here!” 1. I would like a fact check on this. 2. After this moment, Heather references this scene from Mommie Dearest in the confessional, solidifying her status as this cast’s one true gay icon. The other cast members actually do agree that Meredith hasn’t been a great friend to Lisa, who is left crying in the bathroom clutching a roll of toilet paper. 

While Lisa’s explosive tirades are accidentally funny, Meredith’s white-hot, quiet rage is genuinely scary to watch. While everyone else is dealing with Hurricane Lisa, Meredith fumes in the kitchen wearing a confusing original tracksuit while Mary mutters to herself that Heather “has the snobbishness of a true Mormon” and looks “inbred.” At this point, everyone should have gone to bed hours ago, but Whitney still tries to work things out with Meredith. She tries to explain that she didn’t mean any harm to Meredith by once again questioning the timing of her dad’s memorial, but Meredith doesn’t buy it and neither do I. Meredith brings up Whitney’s father, an addict who she hasn’t spoken to in months, and asks how she would like it if the group questioned her stories about him. Meredith is certainly hitting below the belt, though Whitney could have avoided this whole situation by believing Meredith’s first (and most plausible) story. Meredith points this out, to which Whitney responds, “Do you want me to hire a private investigator to find out?” I’m not on Whitney’s side here, but that’s a solid burn. Apparently, Mary was standing in the corner during the whole conversation, and after witnessing the confrontation, she just says “women” and shakes her head. Okay!

At this point, everyone has officially lost it. While Jen, Heather and Whitney are drunk peeing, Meredith storms in and demands to know who is speculating about her dad’s death. Whitney says “everyone,” and Lisa comes in swinging to deny this. I suppose we could quibble about the definition of “speculating,” but so far pretty much everybody, including Lisa, has at least entertained the possibility that Meredith is lying about the memorial. Lisa calls Meredith a “fucking liar,” and things devolve from there. Meredith is so upset and defensive that Heather feels even more suspicious, Lisa refuses to apologize and drunk Whitney yells “Meredith needs you” at Mary over and over. For once, Mary’s constant annoyance with Whitney makes complete sense, and Mary says this trip was her “last attempt” to make peace with the group. (Maybe she was never going to film the Season 2 reunion.)

After what has felt like 17 episodes of real-time documentary footage, yet another grueling girls’ trip has come to an end. Even Meredith elects to ride home on the sprinter van, and everyone must have exhausted themselves because no exciting footage is shared.

Back in SLC, Jen meets with her long-suffering lawyer Clayton. I’m always fascinated by Shah legal drama but this is pretty uneventful except for two things: Clayton says they won’t be going against Stuart unless he makes a plea deal and testifies against Jen, which has already happened and we learn that Jen herself wants to take the case to trial. 

Back at the Barlows, something truly remarkable happens: Lisa is cooking! And I mean actually cooking, not reheating Taco Bell. Inspired by the grill in Vail, she makes bacon-wrapped asparagus and immediately announces her plans to become a celebrity chef. (I am similarly ambitious when I am even slightly good at a new hobby.) She is bursting with confidence and announces that her next cooking adventure will be…learning how to make eggs. John, a supportive king, responds with a halfhearted “yeah.” With John, she debriefs after the trip and declares that she’s done getting in the middle of Jen and Meredith’s problems. She also says she will “always love” Meredith, which is an interesting stance considering her entire rant just days earlier.

For probably the last time, we get a sneak peek into Faith Temple, which is always equal parts fascinating and frightening. Apparently, Mary invited Jen personally to attend a service, which definitely feels like a trap. Jen, who relates to being accused of wrongdoing, wants to check out Mary’s church herself before making any preconceived judgments. What she finds is, as always, unique. In the church’s first in-person service since the pandemic, congregants tearfully read very passionate letters about how much they love Mary, all while someone fans her like she’s a medieval monarch. This is not the kind of footage you want when others are accusing you of running a cult where you’re worshiped as a God, but Mary has never had great judgment on what to share on a reality show with producers who are definitely not on her side. 

The episode closes with Meredith, who, along with her yassified personal trainer Jeff, is bringing out some sort of machine that looks like something between exercise equipment and futuristic torture device. I don’t know what her plan is, but she has brought out wine and a full spread of appetizers, so this workout already seems like my speed. Meredith has invited Whitney and Heather to experience…whatever this is, but Whitney is still mad at Meredith from Zion, and she plans on fact-finding, once again, about the date of her father’s memorial. At this point, I have steeled myself for another disastrous confrontation, but the vibes are much better away from the Cinco de Mayo pressure cooker. Heather and Whitney try these mysterious machines, which apparently use direct current muscle stimulation, whatever that means. (Heather knows this is probably pseudoscience but considers putting one in Beauty Lab anyway.) Meredith apologizes for her Zion outbursts and says that she believes Whitney’s intentions were good even if her delivery was questionable. She also gives a clear answer to one of Whitney’s biggest questions: the date of the memorial. This date matches Heather’s story and not Lisa’s, which I’m not sure means anything nefarious. All three, though, speculate that Lisa is up to something. Behind the scenes, Whitney and Heather were much bigger Meredith memorial truthers than Lisa, but for Meredith, who knows her friendship with Lisa is already on shaky ground, this is just one more question mark. For now, this is Meredith’s biggest ammunition, at least until the reunion, where everyone can hash out Lisa’s private comment that Meredith has “fucked half of New York.” (Woo!) Next week: the season finale!

Random observations:

• A lot of these women pronounce Zion like out-of-towners. (It’s zi-IN, not zi-ON. SMH)
• Meredith once again dispels the rumors that she traveled to Vail separately because she knew that the FBI was looking for Jen: “I’d want to be there to watch the arrest. Are you crazy? You think I would have missed it if I was the cause of it?”
• Who knows if the series will ever fully unpack all of the dirt Meredith has on Jen or all of the details people know about Faith Temple Church. So much left on the table, so little time!

Read more of our recaps of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

Usually, if a play is at all successful, the audience won’t spend time considering the green exit signs in the corner of their peripheral vision. Sure, you might spend a half-second finding the emergency exits during the standard pre-show speech, but if you find yourself staring at escape routes instead of actors in the middle of Act II, something onstage has gone seriously wrong. 

In Egress, a new production at Salt Lake Acting Company, though, it’s perfectly fine to gawk at these oft-forgotten exit signs—in fact, they are intentionally called out during the production. The play’s protagonist (Reanne Acasio,) known only as You, is an architect who specializes in egress, also known as the means of exiting a space, which, yes, includes those ubiquitous green eyesores. After a traumatic incident, which I won’t spoil, You needs a fresh start and accepts a teaching position at a sleepy small-town college. The move, though, hardly stops her insomnia, intrusive thoughts or general sense of anxiety. As You attempts to regain her sense of security, a prosecutor (Vee Vargas, who plays multiple roles) encourages her to testify in a case about the incident that originated her trauma. 

Architectural safety and ethics may not sound like the most compelling subject matter for a drama, especially if, like me, you come in knowing next to nothing about the topic. Playwrights Melissa Crespo and Sarah Saltwick, though, use the protagonist’s career as an effective, unforced metaphor for the instability of trauma. You may be an expert on safety, but she can’t stop relitigating the time her own safety was most threatened, forcing her to reckon with the inherent insecurity of the world, especially as a woman. In one clever device, the play depicts several of You’s lectures, aided by projected images, which, besides providing interesting bits of architectural history, comment on the ways You feels trapped in her own mind.

Large sections of the play are addressed to the audience in second person, a conceit which requires Acasio to carry much of the play’s narrative and emotional arc all by herself. Acasio handles the challenge, building an authentic connection with the audience. She gives a subtle, vulnerable performance, depicting You’s fragile state-of-mind without resorting to histrionic extremes. Vargas and J.C. Ernst, playing the rest of the ensemble, are also compelling performers while providing some needed moments of levity. The lighting, designed by Jessica Greenberg, provides effective visual shorthand for moments that blur the lines between reality and You’s troubled consciousness and Dennis Hassan’s simple scenic design, mostly consisting of three walls of stacked white doors, reflects You’s anxious claustrophobia. Directed by Colette Robert, who also helmed the play’s virtual New Play Sounding Series Festival production at SLAC last year, the play slowly and surely builds tension as it reaches its climax. I wouldn’t call Egress a psychological thriller in the traditional sense, but the plot has just enough forward momentum to propel audiences through the mostly character-based drama.

Crespo and Saltwick don’t shy away from the political issues inherent to the plot. Several times during the play, You considers purchasing a gun for self-protection. (This is America after all.) As she weighs the decision, You contacts an online gun salesman with sexist assumptions about her motivations and questions whether the weapon will actually make her safer. Other characters have their own opinions on gun ownership, and their debates authentically lie beyond the expected liberal/conservative divide. At times, though, these social issues threaten to overwhelm the play’s delicate drama. 

Less explicit, and more successful, are the questions Crespo and Saltwick raise about a criminal justice system that, on a massive scale, fails to protect women. You’s interactions with an attorney are a throughline in the play, and she is reluctant to testify in a trial that she expects will only add to her trauma and sense of instability. The ending finds a delicate balance between providing a resolution and suggesting that the legal system is not the most effective avenue for providing genuine healing. In one telling moment, You asks her students to design the safest places they can imagine—many inadvertently create prisons. You’s obsession with safety may be a natural response to a frightening world, but as Egress movingly shows, self-preservation is not the same as healing.

Egress will be performed in person through Feb. 27 and streamed online from Feb. 21-March 6. For tickets and more information, visit Salt Lake Acting Company’s website. Read more about theater in Utah.