David Williamson: The Jack Manning Trilogy: Face to Face, A Conversation and Charitable Intent.

We live in a world where conflict is resolved in aggressive, confrontational and vengeful ways. Evil doers, as averred somewhat disturbingly by the United States President, are to be 'smoked out of their holes' and eliminated from society to remove any threat of them harming it. Although this approach makes for heated social debate and exciting fictional drama, David Williamson's The Jack Manning Trilogy does not take such a callous approach to conflict resolution. Presented as if they were three actual case studies, these one-act, one-scene plays statically position the characters in a horseshoe formation around the edge of the stage, as fictional convener Jack Manning conducts the relatively new procedure known as Community Conferencing. Co-workers, victims of crime and perpetrators are brought together to verbalize their torment and frustration in an attempt at greater understanding and reconciliation.

The first play in the trilogy, Face to Face, raises the technical problem of Community Conferencing in a workplace in which there is no dispute about the particular act that caused the conflict. Here Jack intervenes to ask whether Glen can …