Trapped in a routine that is both comfort and cage, 38-year-old Kenneth lives in Cranberry, a small town in upstate New York where he works in a bookstore. Suddenly, the bookstore’s understanding and supportive owner becomes ill and has to sell. Kenneth finds himself without a job and spending his night’s drinking in a tiki bar.
In Primary Trust, the 2024 Pulitzer Prize winning one-act play by Eboni Booth, the transforming possibilities of incremental change are explored and celebrated. Kenneth’s mother died when he was young and he was raised in a less than stellar orphanage. All of which has left a very reserved adult, troubled and lonely, and initially at any rate, spectacularly ill-equipped to find a new job.
Surprisingly enough, he is hired as a teller by the Primary Trust Bank and begins to open up. Stanley Andrew Jackson (Ken Ludwig’s The Three Musketeers) stars as Kenneth and calls the play “a beautiful love letter to becoming.
“I think we all undergo a journey of discovering who we are and what the world is and what the world can be. Kenneth, the character I play, really gets to engage in a journey of transformation. He lives in a small town. He has been living a life of routine but something surprising one day happens that upends his whole life. We get to see him navigate these really small changes that he has to make internally,” Jackson says.
Directed by Niegel Smith, Executive Artistic Director of NYC’s Obie Award-winning theater The Flea, other cast members from the Alley’s Resident Acting Company include Michelle Elaine as Corrina/Wally’s Waiter/Bank Customers, Chris Hutchison as Clay/Sam/ Le Pousselet Bartender and David Rainey as Bert.
Jackson, who graduated from Carver Magnet High School in Alief ISD, says he draws upon his own life to understand the impact that changing circumstances can have on someone’s life.
“I mean there are so many moments in my life where the unexpected had shifted how I needed to move forward. I think about being an undergrad when I was about to graduate from Howard University in Washington, D.C. with plans to go to grad school in New York and then I did a Shakespeare program and my whole life was shifted.” He decided to go abroad and ended up getting a master’s in Classical Acting from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He is now based in New York City.
What he particularly likes about Primary Trust is that “It’s a fun show. We get to experience it in a very fun and light way but these are very real changes that we all kind of go through. It feels like a very needed story especially in a time when there’s so much division. This story is really about connection and the importance of seeing people and allowing ourselves to be seen.”
“I think Kenneth is not immediately able to [deal with the change in his life,” Jackson says. “The story really allows to walk with this human as he struggles to deal with the change and we experience the tension that is very human and very real. We see the beauty in him allowing himself to be vulnerable and to embrace the people around him and to ask for help. We don’t have to endure change or life alone. Kenneth has been living a life in sort of isolation.
“Kenneth’s best friend is a guy named Bert. Bert is Kenneth superhero. In a sense he is Kenneth’s savior. Bert is also the person helping Kenneth find new wings and embrace change.”
Jackson says the humor and the lightness with which playwright Booth tells the story will surprise people and allow audience members “to open up and enjoy the ride,” adding: “This play has a gentle soul.”
Performances are scheduled for May 2-25 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p,m, Sundays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $53-$61.
