Kash Goins’ ‘74 Seconds... to Judgment’ at the Arden: The challenges and failures of empathy

74 Seconds… to Judgment, through March 3 at the Arden Theatre Company, is not just relevant; it is actually ripped from the headlines. Kash Goins’ hot-button play is about the shooting of an African American person by a white policeman. Thus it references all the recent highly publicized events in which Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile died in encounters with law enforcement; in all these cases juries acquitted the policeman.The play’s title refers to the amount of time it took for police officer Jeronimo Yanez to stop Castile’s car for a broken taillight, and then to decide his own life was in danger and to shoot Castile seven times.

How did these acquittals happen? What goes on in the jury room?

Goins gives us a jury in a fictitious case that has been debating the evidence for more than a week; their nerves are frayed and they want to go home, but they also, honorably, want to get at the truth. They have the transcript of the trial and the video footage. What they don’t have is the reality of the lives of the people involved.

The jurors represent many social points of view. Ramona (Kala Moses Baxter) is a middle-aged, middle-class black woman who is terrific. Doug (Peter Bisgaier) is an aggressive, belligerent ex-cop from a long line of cops. Bill (played by Goins) is a successful, hotheaded African American entrepreneur. Pat (Dan Hodge) is a glasses-wearing white liberal who is deeply offended by most of the others. Kim (Julianna Zinkel) is a young mother who is both accurately and mockingly referred to as Miss Congeniality.

Brandon (Travoye Joyner), the youngest of the group, is an acting student whose idea for breaking the deadlock is for the jurors to act out the events surrounding the shooting; this galvanizes the action of the play we’re watching. Thus 74 Seconds is not just a play about a trial and about racial profiling; it is also a play about theater and its sociopolitical value.

And that duality is both the play’s strength and weakness. On one hand, all the points of view expressed by the jury members are entirely predictable; they are a parade of familiar, ugly prejudices and venomous arguments. That play would have been tedious as well as upsetting. It also would have locked the jurors into irreconcilable positions, rendering impossible any group verdict on guilt or innocence.

But once the jurors begin to act out what they imagine to be the attitudes and events of the trial characters, the drama shifts and the passions escalate as they become the people they are judging. The problem with this empathy exercise is that it becomes a parade of acting techniques.

Amina Robinson’s direction lets subtlety vanish as the cast performs their roles on scales that are too big, too loud, too blatant, too implausibly articulate, too self-aggrandizing. Trembling lips, bulging veins. Nobody takes on a role that is contrary to their previous positions — that might have made a crucial point — and I imagine that the audience, too, leaves confirmed in the attitudes and opinions they came in with.

As playwright, Kash Goins brings intensity and racial outrage to the stage, and it is notable that he was able to reach across the dividing lines of race, gender, and age to write convincing speeches for each of his characters.

Black History Month has been launched.