It ain’t easy talking about hate. It’s depressing to feel like it should have gotten easier in recent years, considering how often various groups are demonized in our world, but it’s still hard to contemplate dehumanization in a way that isn’t didactic. So how do you turn the subject of bigotry into something that’s thoughtful and engaging, rather than superficial or exploitative?

Two new Salt Lake City theatrical productions take on that challenge, both proving largely successful even through the occasional stumble. Plan-B Theatre Company’s Full Color approaches it from a local perspective, compiling eight short monologues by Utah-based writers about the experience of being people of color in our state. They consider it with a range of tones, from the wry humor of Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin’s “Fried Chicken” (performed by Yolanda Strange), about being “profiled” at a supermarket deli counter, to Bijan J. Hosseini’s “At Least One” (performed by Alec Kalled), a harrowing account of a traffic stop.

Jerry Rapier’s direction places the eight actors in a set resembling a campsite, with a sense of camaraderie in the knowing responses of others to the experiences being related. That notion of a “unified front” helps overcome the reality in any anthology—whether theatrical, literary, cinematic or otherwise—that some stories will feel more resonant than others. It’s also perhaps inevitable, in a group of stories by theater people, that no fewer than three of the stories are related to the specific experience and frustrations of being an actor of color, which might not connect as directly with the experience of many viewers.

Still, the best of the offerings pack a punch. There’s a genuine complexity to Tatiana Christian’s “I Still Have to Live Here” (performed by Talia Heiss), which addresses thorny topics of intersectionality and performative anger over racial injustice. And by the time the show wraps with “At Least One”—with Kalled’s performance winding through moments of genuine terror—we see both the times at which someone can feel most alone, and why it’s so important to fight these fights collectively.

Joshua Harmon’s 2022 play Prayer for the French Republic—receiving its local premiere at Pioneer Theatre Company—takes its meditation on bigotry overseas, albeit with a distinct relevance to events closer to home. It’s set primarily circa 2016, as a Jewish family in Paris—Marcelle (Judith Lightfoot Clarke), Charlie (Alok Tewari) and their adult children Daniel (Japhet Balaban) and Elodie (Kim Taff)—confront the rising tide of French antisemitism, particularly after Daniel is the victim of a hate crime, leaving Charlie anxious enough that he begins seriously considering moving to Israel.

Harmon has a lot of ground he wants to cover over the play’s three-hour running time, including the history of Marcelle’s great-grandparents, grandfather and father in 1940s France, and Marcelle’s distant American cousin/exchange student Molly (Maggie Goble) providing an outsider perspective. The text feels on the shakiest ground when trying to address the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Molly’s earnest leftist serving as the primary voice critical of Israel (andTaff's wonderfully motor-mouthed Elodie as her challenger), yet there’s a level on which that topic becomes almost distracting to the other themes Prayer for the French Republic wants to cover in spanning the long, ugly history of European antisemitism.

What emerges most strongly, however—thanks to the intertwined narrative structure, and Karen Azenberg’s direction leading actors through scenes across the decades—is the sense of “home,” and how that word is supposed to create a sense of security. The Benhamou and Salomon families at the center of the play wind through different perspectives on when and why to leave an old place behind and look for peace elsewhere, and as a result Prayer for the French Republic becomes a bittersweet kind of immigrant story. In both of these plays, the drama is at its strongest as people confront the kind of “othering” that makes it clear the place you consider home doesn’t always seem to want you there.

Full Color runs through Nov. 10 at the Rose Wagner Center Studio Theatre (138 W. 300 South), tickets at arttix.org
Prayer for the French Republic runs through Nov. 9 at the Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre (300 S. 1400 East), tickets at pioneertheatre.org