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(^123)The air I breathe, the soil I step on,the food I eat, the water I drink, thesun that makes me happy. If we un-derstand that our survival dependson the Earth and really appreciate allthose gifts, maybe we can show a bitmore care. Fashion is a trillion-dollarindustry. We have the means. We justhave to want to do it.” IDENTITY POLITICSCONTINUED FROM PAGE 88that bubbles with the subversive witand intellectual provocation that havebecome her trademark.“To me, the naturalistic three-actplay feels like the straight white maleof theatrical forms,” she says. “I noticedthat straight white maleness, whichused to be the default, seemed to havebecome a label. And I noticed straightwhite men adapting to suddenly havingto take on this label, the way marginal-ized people have had labels applied tothem forever. And then I realized thatI could make an identity-politics showabout that—it seemed like a really dif-icult challenge.”Lee, who grew up in Washingtonstate, started her career in academia butfour years into her Berkeley doctoraldissertation realized she was miserableand blurted out to her therapist thatshe wanted to be a playwright. “I wassuperembarrassed that I had told herthat,” she recalls. “If you’re an academ-ic studying Shakespeare and you sayyou want to be a playwright, it’s likebeing a veterinarian and saying thatyou would like to be a dog.”Lee directed Straight White Menherself in a 2014 incarnation at thePublic Theater and a few years laterat the Steppenwolf Theatre Companyin Chicago. This time around, Step-penwolf ’s artistic director, Anna D.Shapiro, will be at the helm. Shapiroestablished herself as a peerless directorof ensemble casts—and won a TonyAward—with Tracy Letts’s August:Osage County, and she has gone onto earn a reputation for turning moviestars into stage actors, eliciting first-rate performances from the likes ofMichael Cera in Kenneth Lonergan’sThis Is Our Youth and James Francoin Of Mice and Men.Satirical and ultimately compassion-ate, the play centers on the widowedEd (Tom Skerritt) and his three adultsons, home for the holidays. Thoughthey engage in plenty of guys-will-be-guys behavior—video gaming, crudeteasing, eating Chinese food from thecarton—these aren’t, in fact, stereotyp-ical straight white men. They grew upplaying their own version of Monop-oly, called Privilege, designed by theirmother to teach them “how not to beassholes” (the game involves drawingcards labeled Denial and Excuses, suchas “What I said wasn’t sexist-slash-racist-slash-homophobic because I wasjoking. Pay ifty dollars to the Lesbianand Gay Community Services Cen-ter”). The two younger brothers haveeach found their way—both in life andaround the dilemma of their privilege:Drew (Hammer) is a college professorand novelist who writes about socialjustice, and Jake (Josh Charles) is abanker who unapologetically acceptsthat he’s a “dickhead.” But Matt (PaulSchneider), the oldest brother and theone with the most promise (he went toHarvard), lives at home with his fatherand works as a temp, depressed andunwilling to ind a career more in keep-ing with his abilities—and his familyturns on him.“You start out thinking that Drew isthe most liberal and understanding ofhis brother’s situation—compassion-ate and trying to help,” Hammer says.“But then you realize he’s only trying tohelp because he just doesn’t understandwhat happened to this shining exampleof white manhood, and it scares him. Itbecomes a kind of existential thing, like,Matt had the best shot, and if it didn’twork for him, what the fuck is this allabout? Oh, my God, it has to work forhim so that it will also work for me.”Hammer says that he felt an imme-diate anity for the play after takingthe role of a gay man who feels com-pelled to appear straight in Call Meby Your Name, which he describes asa “transformative” and “liberating”experience. “A lot of my research forthe ilm lent itself to this from the op-posite side, looking at a man who’spressured by his family to be some-thing that he doesn’t necessarily feelthat he is,” he says. “The question ishow many straight white men feel thatthat’s their existence—not just in termsof sexuality but in terms of the conceptof the job hunt or the dating game orxenophobia or racism.”Continuing to explore the themes ofrace and privilege, Hammer also hasa new film out this month, Sorry toBother You, in which he plays the bossof an African American telemarketer(Lakeith Stanield, page 52) who getsahead by using his “white voice.” Butfor now, Hammer is focused on thecharacter he’s about to play onstage,in whom, he confesses, he recognizesaspects of himself. “Like Drew, I’vealways been, like, ‘I’m a fairly liberalguy, I’m progressive, I work in the arts,and blah blah blah.’ But do I still suferfrom those same blindnesses? Am I stillless evolved than I like to think I am?Am I Drew? It’s going to be amazingto delve into this character and just seewhat happens.” THE GRADUATECONTINUED FROM PAGE 98and finally El Paso. (Khalid’s fatherdied when Khalid was in grade school.)“I think it was the hardest move for mykids,” Wolfe says. While there was noplace they really thought of as home,“they were getting older. Khalid...had to go to a new school, a new cul-ture, and make it work.”That summer after moving to Texas,Khalid felt lost. He had neglected totake the SAT or the ACT, so his chanceof attending a college that appealedto him seemed unlikely. “I had a lotof time where I sat in an empty roomand stared at my wall just thinking,What am I going to do with my life?”He missed his friends in New York.“All those people who tell you, ‘Oh, it’snot goodbye. It’s see you later.’ Theystop texting you.”Then a car accident landed Khalidin the hospital, and while the incidentwasn’t serious (or his fault—he was inthe backseat), it made him think abouthow he was spending his time. “I justsat in that hospital bed and I thought,Damn, I need to do something tochange the way my life is going.” Hestarted writing music—partly as ther-apy, he says. “My mom is extremelytalented. I looked up to her and wantedto do what she was doing.”Khalid wrote throughout his senioryear, pouring into his compositionsthe loneliness and longing—but alsothe exuberance and hope—of being ahigh-schooler. CONTINUED ON PAGE 124