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Some 60 years ago black intellectual and littérateur James Baldwin met with the leading conservative spokesman and author of his day, William F. Buckley, Jr., to debate what seemed a startling proposition in 1965: “Is the American Dream at the Expense of the American Negro?”

Held at the University of Cambridge in the UK, the debate was televised on BBC, then rebroadcast to U.S. audiences on public television.

Now adapted for the stage and directed by Christopher McElroen, audiences can witness the heart of this historic event in the Chicago premiere of american vicarious’ “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley” at the DePaul University Chicago campus. It's an immersive experience, in the sense it is staged in a former gathering hall of McCormick Theological Seminary, with architectural similarities to the Cambridge setting. The show has also run in New York and London prior to its Chicago arrival.

At DePaul, McElroen, who has been developing this production for the past four years, uses original footage from the debate to provide context, leading in with large screen projections of the introductions of Buckley and Baldwin before the original audience—700 students and guests seated in the debate hall at Cambridge. This approach not only provides historic context, but melds the original event with the experience of the live debate being re-enacted for audiences at DePaul.

And as if on cue, this live audience applauds along with the Cambridge attendees of 60 years ago to welcome the live speakers.

As the projected moderator from Cambridge footage introduces them, we meet a live James Baldwin (played by Teagle F. Bougere) and William F. Buckley, Jr. (Eric T. Miller). The projection disappears and we are in the throes of the debate. As at Cambridge, live student moderators introduced core aspects of the arguments for and against the proposition. In the live DePaul theater, acting students take these roles in rotation at each performance.

Baldwin lays out key points in a speech that is methodically plotted out, but intuitively driven: that one must realize that there are different realities experienced by Blacks and whites, and so even the framing of the question is unbalanced:

I have to put it that way – ones sense, ones system of reality. It would seem to me the proposition before the House, and I would put it that way, is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro, or the American Dream *is* at the expense of the American Negro. Is the question hideously loaded, and then ones response to that question – ones reaction to that question – has to depend on effect and, in effect, where you find yourself in the world, what your sense of reality is, what your system of reality is. That is, it depends on assumptions which we hold so deeply so as to be scarcely aware of them.

Eric T. Miller as William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley acknowledges the truth to Baldwin’s contention that Blacks live with less than whites, earn less, and fewer have achieved wealth and accomplishment within U.S. society. But Buckley asserts that Blacks must try harder; that as a people they have not advanced themselves, and once they do, they will live in equality. Buckley doesn't want to upset the applecart and believes that America supports Black equality.

The fundamental friend of the Negroe people in the United States is the good nature and is the generosity and is the good wishes and is the decency, the fundamental decency, that do lie at the reserves of the spirit of the American people.

Well the road to hell, as they say, is paved with such good intentions. Baldwin identifies for the Cambridge audience that Western cultural imperialism as the root of the issue.

A white South African or Mississippi sharecropper, or Mississippi sheriff, or a Frenchman driven out of Algeria, all have, at bottom, a system of reality which compels them to, for example, in the case of the French exile from Algeria, to offend French reasons from having ruled Algeria. The Mississippi or Alabama sheriff, who really does believe, when he’s facing a Negro boy or girl, that this woman, this man, this child must be insane to attack the system to which he owes his entire identity.

Of course, to such a person, the proposition which we are trying to discuss here tonight does not exist. And on the other hand, I have to speak as one of the people who’ve been most attacked by what we now must here call the Western or European system of reality. What white people in the world, what we call white supremacy – I hate to say it here – comes from Europe. It’s how it got to America. Beneath then, whatever one’s reaction to this proposition is, has to be the question of whether or not civilizations can be considered, as such, equal, or whether one’s civilization has the right to overtake and subjugate, and, in fact, to destroy another.

The production at DePaul illuminates the tremendous courage, and intellectual self-possession of Baldwin, who likens himself to the Biblical prophet Jeremiah, speaking unwelcome truths.

How does this simulation differ from the original debate? In the historic footage, Baldwin spoke as the only Black in a sea of white faces. Seated in the round, the live audience at DePaul was predominantly white, but now people of color are present as well, heightening the witness to the shamefulness of Buckley’s serious argument that Blacks needn’t complain, as their lives have measurably improved.

As with the original, Baldwin here is poetic and theatrical, and Bougere’s rendering of him is quite excellent. While the show’s setting at DePaul’s gothic wood trussed Cortelyou Commons hall is visually in keeping with its Cambridge cousin, the acoustics present challenges for the cast. Bougere, working with Baldwin’s clear language, works the room, projecting powerfully to the ceiling and pacing the stage in measured strides.

The historic Buckley, with his mid-Atlantic accent and overblown vocabulary, cannot help but come across as condescending in the original. Miller’s rendition of Buckley carries off with the same air of entitlement, jettisoning the Mid-Atlantic drawl, but still mired in Buckley’s sometimes convoluted sentences, and a occasionally obscure vocabulary that makes him sound like he is speaking with a mouthful of mutton.

Likewise sound quality is a challenge in displaying the spotty footage from the original broadcast. But the essence comes across directly and powerfully.

In an after-show audience comments session led by director McElreon, a common lament expressed is that we are still struggling with the issues of racism in our theoretically more enlightened times. Frankly, racism can only be addressed by a societal willingness for systemic change. And in truth, the only difference between what Buckley had to say in 1965, is that we can hear, and understand him, just a little better now.

TimeLine’s Chicago premiere production of the american vicarious’ “Debate: Baldwin Vs. Buckley,” is presented in partnership with the american vicarious and The Theatre School at DePaul University runs through March 2 at DePaul’s Cortelyou Commons, 2324 N. Fremont Street, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.