Writer: Dennis Trainor Jr
Director: David Esbjornson
Manifest Destiny’s Child is a play written by, performed by and about Dennis Trainor Jr, although he is only a part of the story. The bigger story told in the play is his role in the campaign of the 2016 Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein, and that story itself is also shown as part of something bigger as it links together with the story of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and the plans to build a 1,200 mile oil pipeline cutting across the land in North Dakota that the reservation stands on.
Trainor Jr is an engaging host who is aware of his own relatively privileged position in society even as he sits way down the social ladder from the main power brokers in the US. A film maker, and actor who had made documentaries about the Occupy movement, he was effectively trying to get his own social justice project Acronym TV alive at the time when he was approached by Stein and offered the job of Communications Director by Stein. He admits he was out of his depth on that, but Stein and the rest of her inner circle were also out of their depth when it came to knowing how to run a campaign or even what success would look like for a candidate that was never going to make it to the White House.
As the show develops, Trainor JR reveals how the campaign was twisted out of shape by the left wing appeal of Bernie Sanders and then how the campaign and the country were twisted out of shape by Donald Trump. Stein’s teams refusal to even acknowledge the concept of white privilege or to get behind the Standing Rock community makes for a fascinating case study of how caution and denial hamper activism and also how politics and politicians ignore the issues in their pursuit of power.
There is so much more to this show than Trump and it is perhaps unfortunate that so much is made of the journey to Trumplandia in the blurb for the show, as it leaves aside the bigger issues that Trainor JR actively seeks to address both in the show and his day to day life.
David Esbjornson’s direction brings out these details and also ensures that Trainor Jr is the passionate narrator of a story that is heavy on detail but never dry in delivery. It’s a story that needs to be told, and that has the makings of a film or mini-series with a larger cast to capture the madness of the campaign and the country. Less a play and more a political seminar, it is something that should be compulsory viewing for any politics or social studies students.
Runs until 27 August 2023 | Image:
