Actor Mattie Hawkinson
The City of Conversation
Right before rehearsals started for Northlight’s The City of Conversation, I had my own D.C. flashback. I was unpacking a box in my mother’s new home and stumbled upon some mementos: yearbooks, letterman pins, the kind of nostalgic objects that induce guilt if you trash them too soon. But I found a treasure- some blurry photos from a scholarship trip I’d taken to our nation’s capitol in ’99. I was one of a hundred teens from around the country asked to meet in D.C. for a week and they called our group (a bit too ambitiously, if you ask me) “The United States Youth Senate.” We were chosen based on our ability to memorize the constitution and the trip was sponsored by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. The Hearsts were actually there and they ate every meal with us. Conversation included politics, the amount of cream in the tomato bisque (too much), the benefits of Yale vs. Harvard (not Yale), and (according to Anne Hearst) why my nylons would better match a beige pump. But they were wonderful hosts and it was an impressive week of D.C. voyeurism, tourism, and starry political sightings.
The photos include a young me awkwardly posing with Hilary Clinton at the White House, stupid grin on my face. Another of me trying on body armor at the Pentagon, which fit me like a tent. Pictures of flags from the Justice Department (where my character in The City of Conversation works). We met Jessie Helms, Justice Breyer, Strom Thurmond, and (so exciting to some) Chris Matthews, host of Hardball. We saw Teddy Kennedy speak on the senate floor. Or rather, we saw the top of his head from the balcony and heard that familiar accent echo upwards. We knew he was a legend but I overheard other kids on the bus talking about how “flawed he was,” how he “really blew it.”
The young woman I’m playing in The City of Conversation would have been right at home on that trip. Because it was all about access—giving young people the chance to ask questions to those in positions of power, creating an audience and a conversation that would never normally happen. Most of my peers were tongue-tied like me, because what do you ask a Supreme Court Justice given a five minute Q&A? What do you say to Strom Thurmond when you’re seventeen? Do you dare take a selfie? It takes a really special, informed kid to know how to make the moment magic. I was not that kid.
As we work on this play (in which Strom Thurmond and Teddy Kennedy are in their prime) I’m reminded of two things. 1) D.C. is awesome and 2) Some people live and thrive in that crazy world at all times, not just for a week. Some people would do anything for those five minutes and know exactly what to say when the moment comes. And I’m playing one of those people in The City of Conversation, and her name is Anna Fitzgerald.
