When 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police in 2014, it touched off a national conversation about race, violence and accountability. It also led to the 2016 play “Objectively/Reasonable: A Community Response to the Shooting of Tamir Rice.” A reimagined production aims to continue the conversation with a performance Saturday at Near West Theatre.
“I am hoping that the conversation makes folks want to take some type of action,” said Tamir’s mother, Samaria. “Having the hard conversations with the Republican Party or who's ever running the country. When you bring it to the arts, it's a whole different conversation. And it needs to be happening.”
The play premiered two years after Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police while playing with a toy gun at Cudell Recreation Center on the West Side. Officers saw a gun, which was missing the orange tip indicating it was a toy, and thought it was real. Their response was ruled by the Justice Department “objectively reasonable,” which is where the play got its name.
Originally commissioned by the company Playwrights’ Local, both productions have been directed by Terrence Spivey. The play was shaped by interviews with community members.
“It was like a combustion. We didn't even think it was going to do anything, because when you do a movie about that you rarely get that many people coming in to see it. But the people came in. It was such a call for action,” he said.
NPR’s Michel Martin even reached out, making the play the centerpiece for a panel discussion on race. Now Spivey has updated the piece for the new production.
“I always wanted to go back to the Black Arts movement of the ‘70s,” he said. “It was unflinching.”
The new version has less movement and more of the actors reading on stage, embodying different social and legal views of what happened.
“They're breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience,” he said. “You're going to see other names and faces up there that have been brutally battered and beaten way after Tamir popping up on that screen.”
One of the performers is veteran film and television actress Phyllis Yvonne Stickney. She said Rice’s death and the aftermath are a story that needs to be experienced by a wider audience.
"There's so much that happened so fast in our lives and in time now that we don't often take that moment, take that breath, to remember and say, 'Hey, this is real, this is what happened to a family and to us, you know, vicariously,’” she said.
Stickney also said she hopes the new version can be replicated by some of the two dozen organizations that make up the Black Theatre Network.
When the original play premiered, producers weren’t sure how Tamir’s mother might react, given that they try to show different facets of the debate surrounding her son’s death. However, Samaria Rice has been supportive – then and now.
“I'm just hoping that people will understand how I'm building Tamir's legacy,” she said. “I believe it's much needed in the community to show resilience and to keep our voice elevated. Northeast Ohio needs to be uncomfortable. It's nothing comfortable about a 12-year-old being murdered, violated of their human rights and civil rights.”
Last month, Rice finally got the city to bestow landmark status on a butterfly-shaped memorial garden she created at Cudell. She’s also been working since 2018 to establish a youth center that will mentor kids in the things Tamir loved: music, art, sports and theater.
