Theater Review | ‘The Agitators’

PCPA’s Solvang Festival Theater Ends the Summer Season with a Thought-Provoking Two-Person Play About the Fight for Equality

Cordell Cole and Polly Firestone Walker in PCPA's production of "The Agitators" | Photo: Luis Escobar, Reflections Photography Studio

The Agitators, produced at Solvang Festival Theater by PCPA, is a nourishing piece of dramatic work that is masterfully waltzed by actors who maintain the aching balance of internal and external tension necessary to keep a two-person play pushing hard to its conclusion. Directed by Mark Booher, The Agitators (by Mat Smart) follows the work and friendship of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony from their roots as early-career activists. Their deep comradeship and passion for gender and race equality would span decades.

This more obvious conflict, pushing for change within culture and the government, is the external force that drives these characters. Douglass (Cordell Cole) is portrayed with the charisma and passion to face the nation despite the hate he receives for rising from slavery to a place among the scholars. Anthony (Polly Firestone Walker) is written as “modern” in a way that rings true to today’s audience, while living as an anachronism within the play (which speaks to both the writer and performer’s ability to connect concepts from past and present and the sluggishness of cultural progress).

While the external conflict keeps these two forging ahead, their internal conflict is where the true, messier questions of the play are broached. When given the choice to push legislation or fund their preferred cause (race equality for Douglass and gender equality for Anthony) at the expense of the other’s, there is understandable anger, disappointment, and feelings of betrayal. The two realize that while they are running toward the same goal, it’s not a race, but a treacherous slog through a minefield of obstacles — and they simply have different strategies.

The Agitators is a high-caliber theatrical experience that reminds us that while the world turns on inequity, there are those willing to fight for a better future. See it in Solvang through September 8. See pcpa.org.