The play tells the story of a group of primarily black actors backstage preparing to work on a play.  The play that they are working on is a cliché of black slaves working on a plantation and facing a lynching for one of their own attempting to run away.  The play within the play is terrible.  It asks all of its black actors to portray black people in the most racist, shuffling, “yes, master” way possible.  I never knew how demeaning and limiting black actors were treated in film and on stage.  By the middle of the play you could feel the audience wince with every racist gesture made on stage.  Trouble in Mind was a text book in racism – – and by focusing on the racism that existed in the rehearsal of this terrible play, you could begin to connect the dots and see how that racism spoke for all Americans OUTSIDE of a rehearsal hall.  In the leading role, Lachanze, as Wiletta Mayer, was simply brilliant in her attack on being treated as a stereotype and how badly she wanted to simply be an actor – free of any pre-conceived definition.  It was the finest piece of anti-racist theatre that I have ever seen.