Termites, Genies and Gentrification: Phillyist Reviews Puppet Uprising's Mite We?

Let it be said, first, that I am glad this little drama exists and look forward to seeing more.

Mite We? is a testament to community theatre's ability to make art that directly confronts local issues. In it, members of the Puppet Uprising theatre group attempted to confront white flight, gentrification, and general liberal angst right here in West Philly to adults and children of all races in a span of 90 minutes using puppets. That is not an easy task and, for what it’s worth, they did a fair job.

Mite We? tells the tale of Bernice (admirably acted by writer and director Beth Nixon). Bernice is one of the many white, liberal, 20-something, college-grad semi-artists who have found themselves pouring into West Philadelphia these past couple years. The play starts with one of several sequences wherein tired players go about their daily work underneath the voice of God (or in this case, probably the voice of Wikipedia). Bernice stumbles out of bed, grabs a piece of toast, half-heartedly brushes her teeth and puts on her clothes while over the speaker, a long dictionary definition of “human being,” is calmly rattled off. The voice covers people as evolved African monkeys, as conscious beings of personhood, as cultural groups and finally as immigrants, both voluntary and (with a dramatic cutting of the lights) involuntary.

We follow Bernice as she goes to a local “genie”-ologist in search of solace for her white guilt, then to the covers of her bed where she meets an inquisitive dust mite named Ruth (played by Kelly Nesbitt) and finally into her floorboards to confront the tough termite Clyde (played by Betty Pulse). These three “housemates” of Bernice’s West Philadelphia home eventually go on a Wizard of Oz/Alice in Wonderland-style trip back to the genie Gene (Morgan Fitzpatrick Andrews). In between, there is an (admittedly clever) puppet reenactment of white flight, a musical number by the shared bacteria inside all three species of travelers’ stomachs and a giant elephant blowing peanuts on the audience. There are clearly a lot of ideas going on behind it all and not everything is clear, but in the end a general theme of all neighbors working together inside of a flawed system as best they did came through. Sort of.

The thing about Mite We? is that it can’t seem to figure out who its intended audience is. On the one hand, the elaborate costumes and exaggerated motions of the actors make it firmly come off as children’s theatre. A very fair assumption, I think, considering the director’s background in puppet drama for schools, addiction recovery centers and mental health clinics. At the same time, though, the mostly long-winded voice-overs surely are going to go over a lot of kids' heads, as are the charged but rushed descriptions of Bernice’s discomfort with being a part of gentrification. Plus - and I say this as a guy who loves "fucking" - there was a surprising amount of casual cursing for a kids' show.

And that is the thing. The issues of Mite We? might not be the kinds of things kids - with their still open senses of identity - are even going to really comprehend. I mean shit, I didn’t have anything like a racial complex until college. White guilt, gentrification, and the history of racial inequality in the U.S. are things that us adults have to deal with honestly before we can even hope to articulate it to our kids. And if you are going to do that, you better do it full-on. If your purpose is to speak to the realities of racial and economic tension, dancing around the issues of people in the form of half-complete inter-species metaphors is just not going to get the job done. It was colorful though. Loved the termites.

In this time at the tail end of political correctness, I admire even attempting to talk about modern issues of race and class on stage to a room full of white people. As a young black third generation Philadelphian (now West, but by way of North) whose family still lives throughout, I applaud the courage and ingenuity it takes to take these ideas on. Mite We? is a step in a right direction, all be it a little too tentative and unfocused for my taste. It threw down the gauntlet of talking about gentrification in the West, but never really seemed to arrive at the showdown. Worth checking out, but just as much for what was not said as for what was. Maybe an actual story about three different (human) West Philadelphia families next time. But… with balloons!