If Dee Dee Batteast's No AIDS, No Maids represented a sorely needed caveat for casting agents, directors and audiences alike on looking beyond cultural stereotypes, Karissa Murrell Myers’s Fragments now makes a case for a segment of our population likewise ignored, not based in demographical misapprehension, but in excessive reliance on taxonomical convenience. The difficulty of comprehending large numbers might be rendered easier by division into smaller groups, but when a situation involves a single person—an actor auditioning for a particular role, let's say—why should the description "ethnically ambiguous" present an abundance of obstacles?
This is the question asked by Myers, who knows of what she speaks: born to a father of Northern-European descent and a mother with ancestral roots in the South Pacific Islands, both of whom chose Boise, Idaho, as the ideal place to raise a family, their mixed-race daughter soon grew accustomed to the microaggressive comments of peers, e.g. "You're so exotic!" and "Is that white guy your Dad? It must be cool to be adopted!"
Upon enrolling in college at the racially diverse University of Hawaii, however, her classmates—many offspring to indigenous parents with firsthand recollections of colonialist abuse under United States occupation—now declare "You're so White!" in displays of unwitting xenophobia reflecting a society where strangers in public places do not hesitate to confront unwary "third culture kids" with abrupt queries of "What ARE you?”
The mosaic narrative of Myers's play (its title derived from the existential unease of being "half this, half that") is not without its drawbacks. The chronological leaps evidenced in scenes of op-ed commentary and personal biography sometimes make for delays in locating ourselves within our dramatic universe, as does the conceit of a mere three actors of similar age portraying a multitude of different characters under the staging conditions mandated by current CDC restrictions (the taping appears to be occurring inside an SUV, à la James Cordon's "Carpool Karoake") but though Fragmented may still be in need of further editorial shaping, no one can deny the timeliness of its message.
