Review: In ‘Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad,’ an S.F. native tries to take her city back

Theater isn’t some faraway, valuable factor made by useless white guys. It’s as speedy and zesty as your journey on the 14-Mission, as jagged and harmful because the shattered glass out of your most up-to-date smash-and-grab. And on the Magic Theatre, it’s by and for San Franciscans — notably our residents of coloration susceptible to displacement from a metropolis they not acknowledge.

“Soiled White Teslas Make Me Unhappy,” whose world premiere opened Saturday, March 2, is each SOS alert and valentine, high-tech heist caper and keenly noticed household portrait. Because it traces despair’s spiral and takes a wide-angle view of gentrification, it’s studded with laughs. One sketchy character (Jessica Maria Recinos) has the crime alias of “Brüt”; one other, “KoldKutz” (​​Guillermo “Yiyo” Ornelas), handles a switchblade so clumsily that the one one who may get harm is its wielder. 

Besotted with language, Ashley Smiley’s script, which is directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges, follows Naima (Anna Marie Sharpe) two days earlier than she and her mom (the always-priceless Tanika Baptiste) are getting kicked out of the San Francisco house they’ll not afford. Naima’s been squandering her potential as a rideshare driver, and she will barely get it collectively to brush her tooth within the morning, not to mention cram her life into cardboard packing containers.

In Sharpe’s characteristically sensible efficiency, Naima’s undiagnosed psychological sickness is a wall she builds and a burden she carries. Not flashy or hostile, it’s simply there on a regular basis, and the uncommon moments she rises above it — to flirt ever so briefly with BabyGurl (Jamella Cross), to commerce razzes along with her Unc (Juan Amador) — are small miracles. When Naima decides to drive for the demimonde to choose up further money, it’s not an enormous ethical dilemma; she accepts nearly as the trail of least resistance.

The autos of the play’s title are metaphors many instances over. They’re first a byword for the gentrification the play lambasts. “Rattling close to custom-made automotive that you need to put a deposit on and look ahead to supply… made with Twenty third-century know-how however you’re going to drive round with it soiled? DIRTY?” Naima asks incredulously. She spends her life within the automotive, and Tanya Orellana’s shrewd set — two imposing curved white partitions — conjures aerodynamic design. It additionally serves as a beguiling display screen for Joan Osato’s projection design. When the town’s preposterously hilly streets show on that rounded floor, they appear each distorted and acquainted — our world made unusual and unfathomable. 

Because the play progresses, Teslas additionally turn into weaponizable. These standing symbols may appear to be impenetrable fortresses defending the ruling class from having to reckon with the town round them, however Smiley reveals their vulnerabilities, each technological and poetic. Naima may by no means get her house again, however that doesn’t imply she has to go quietly.

A few of Myrick-Hodges’ youthful forged members appear to have a block between them and their characters’ intentions, and the script can wax didactic, explicating broad sociological traits when the characters’ lived realities made the identical factors simply high quality on their very own. Nonetheless, “Soiled White Teslas” reveals Smiley as a author of nice daring and coronary heart, precisely the sort of artist San Francisco theater ought to be investing in.

Attain Lily Janiak: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com