Spinning Into Butter

Spinning Into Butter is a play by American playwright Rebecca Gilman. The play debuted at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 1999. It was later produced at the Lincoln Center and the Royal Court Theatre. It was named one of the best plays of 1999 by Time, and eventually became the third-most-produced play of the 2000-2001 season. The play takes place at a predominantly white liberal-arts college in Vermont called Belmont College. It focuses on observing the moral and racial inclinations uprooted and laid bare when an all white administrative staff is faced with addressing a hate crime committed against an African American student on campus. One of these administrators is Sarah Daniels, our protagonist. As the Dean of Student Affairs, Sarah is personally responsible for “righting” this wrong. The task will not only prove harder than the staff had anticipated, but it will also uncover things much more threatening and disconcerting about the characters themselves as well as the world we live in today. The play is a rumination on the concept of racism and political-correctness in our modern, supposedly ’post-racial’, society.