plays
love i awethu further
Callie been dreaming bout three days in which they may call up who they be beyond Mistress’ language, box, tomb and barrel, to dream beyond Mistress’ “woman.” From her plans drawn out between tobacco rows, come a collective: her twin, her friends, her nameless mother and ancestor. In this adaptation of Julius Caesar, seven plan a revolt in the Antebellum South.
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PC: Elizabeth Lauren West/Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Workshop Reading directed by Tamilla Woodard, National Playwrights Conference 2023 (starring Alicia Pilgrim, Ngozi Anyanwu, Abigail C. Onwunali, Roslyn Coleman, Cristina Pitter, Whitney Andrews, N'yomi Stewart, and Madeline Seidman)
FURLOUGH's PARADISE
On a three-day furlough from prison, Sade stays with her only cousin, Mina. On a brief reprieve from her life in the West Coast, Mina returns to her hometown for her Aunt's funeral. The cousins try to make sense of grief, home, love, and kinship as time ticks towards the correctional officer's arrival.
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2023 Student Production directed by Leyla Levi, Carlotta Festival of New Plays @ Yale School of Drama (starring Lauren Walker and Janiah-Camile François)
dwellers
inspired by Dionne Brand's A Map to the Door of No Return
a ship churns against the atlantic.
on the deck
a chorus of nine
PC: Clark Burnett (Images featuring members of Dwellers Play Collective; Retreat/ Workshop: September 2021)
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some friends and i have been planting the seeds for a new Black theatre ensemble, moving with this mission: Dwellers Play Collective is a budding, ever-growing theatre ensemble that makes space for Black folks to play, experiment, question and dwell. With love, we strive to create conditions in which Blackness may be boundless, diasporic and defy binaries on every front.
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this play provided the text we explored on our first retreat!
amani
a Black space play
When Amani's mother dies, the world shakes. Her father vows to make it to outer space, where there are no gangs to take his love's life, no prisons to take Black boys' best years. Amani grows up building a rocket ship with her father. As she moves into adulthood, Amani seeks her voice and her own dreams. Will Amani make it to the 'moon'?
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Images from 2023 World Premiere directed by Josiah Davis; PC: Lighting Designer, Marika Kent featuring Denise Manning, Kai Heath, Mars Rucker, Eden Manning and Omari Chancellor
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burnbabyburn: an american dream
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The air conditioner at 1987 Apple St. been broke for a minute and it's hot in the afterlife.
Sky II comes to her lost grandmother looking for answers; Sky has got some blues records and a bunch of poems.
As Sky tells her grandchild her story, they find ways to live and to beat the heat.
Loosely inspired by oral histories.
Photos & Lights by Yichen Zhou, Set by Marcelo Martínez García, Costumes by: Kitty Cassetti featuring: Whitney Andrews, Kayodé Soyemi, and Jacque Simone in 2022 Production in Yale Summer Cabaret, directed by Jacob Basri
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where pathways meet
a Black Space Play
Minnie and Dwight live in a world on fire. And so they take off from 'earth' with dreams of starting anew on a planet all their own. What happens to the tongues and rhythms of the once colonized and enslaved when they first taste true freedom? What happens when Minnie & Dwight's dreams and visions wither and diverge? Who remembers and who forgets?
ain't no dead thing
Noa’s Ark is a diner in Greenwood District where folks come to remake the world. A queer Black woman named Noa stands at the helm and in May of 1921, no one can else can see what’s coming to threaten the streets of Greenwood. Against the backdrop of one of the largest race riots in American history, pairs of lovers try to imagine a world where they can breathe. Is peace possible in a Black future? How do we love with the imminence of violence?
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Graphic Design by Mikayla Johnson
April 2020, Radioplay Production
(Yale Cabaret)
filling basins
Filling Basins is inspired by Tera Hunter's 1997 book, To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War. It tells a story of six women in the 1881 Washerwoman's Strike in Atlanta, Georgia in which thousands of Black washerwomen banded together to form The Washing Society and organized for better working conditions and wages.
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PC: Andrew Schmidt
October 2018, Student Production, Yale DRAMAT
(Yale Repertory Theater; Directed by Anita Norman)
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short plays
shayla the great & the magic paintbrush
a short play for young audiences
blooms
Young superhero Shayla the Great comes from a long line of "Greats" who spend every day making their neighborhood a beautiful place to live. But when Shayla discovers that the world seeks to contain the Greatness of people who look like her, she sets out to find the magic paintbrush that will empower her to make a world that is even more just, more free, and more wondrous! This play for young audiences can serve as a springboard for initiating conversations about community organizing, racial justice and prison abolition. Commissioned and originally produced by Hangar Theatre Company, Ithaca, NY.
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Kim has not believed in love in a long time and the rhythm of work threatens to keep her from her dreams. Leticia has got something to say. On a spring day, both have got ten minutes before their shift at the grocery store.
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https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/94057/blooms
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Photo Credit: Emilia Aghamirzai from 2022 Off- Broadway Production @ Ensemble Studio Theatre, starring Kai Heath and Alisha Espinosa
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