Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge

In 1965, two of America’s intellectual giants were invited to debate whether “the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro,” bringing into sharp focus our country’s deepest divisions. The renowned theater company Elevator Repair Service returns to the Public with Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge, a profoundly relevant presentation of the legendary debate between virtuosic writer James Baldwin and father of American conservatism William F. Buckley Jr. The production concludes with an imagined scene between Baldwin and his close friend Lorraine Hansberry, researched and written by long-time ERS company members April Matthis and Greig Sargeant.

Heralded by the New York Times as “one of the city’s few truly essential theater companies,” Elevator Repair Service applies their trademark approach of verbatim textual exploration and intensive collaboration to re-create Baldwin and Buckley’s blistering dissection of race, racism, and human worth.