Kerry Washington on 'American Son' and her post-'Scandal' interracial relationships onscreen

After donning designer suits and Prada purses as crisis management expert Olivia Pope for seven years of "Scandal," Kerry Washington was used to playing the most powerful person in every room she entered.

So when Shonda Rhimes' groundbreaking ABC series ended last year, Washington found a role as far removed from Pope as she could get, leaving Los Angeles to star in Christopher Demos-Brown's Broadway play "American Son." For four months, eight times a week, she played Kendra, who - humbly dressed in sneakers and jeans - spends the entire 90-minute piece trying to access some form of power.

"Washington honors all the shattered loved ones who have gone through Kendra's experience," wrote The Times' critic Charles McNulty of her performance as a woman desperately waiting in the wee hours of the morning at a Miami police station to find out the fate of her teenage son, Jamal. He's mysteriously MIA after he and some friends had been pulled over by police earlier in the evening.

Kendra's frantic search for information is made all the more complicated by a young uniform officer (Jeremy Jordan), who adheres uncomfortably to "protocol" while stumbling over questions about whether Jamal has a "street name"; Jamal's white