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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars, creators, and industry leaders who are bringing Broadway and the theater industry back to life.

[0:18] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:20] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to playwright Aleshea Harris and director Whitney White about their production of What to Send Up When It Goes Down. A play, a ritual, and a pageant. It's a boundary-pushing theatrical event that earned raves in its 2018 Off-Broadway premiere and has gained acclaim ever since. The show is back in New York for a run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this summer, prior to an engagement this fall at Playwright's Horizons. Harris and White are both in the virtual studio with me to tell us about crafting What to Send Up as a ritual of mourning, grief, and celebration. Hi, Aleshea and Whitney. Thanks for joining me.

[0:57] Aleshea Harris: Hi, thanks for having us.

[1:01] Gordon Cox: So, Aleshea, as I understand it, this was a play that you'd been working on for a few years, or maybe even more, even before we first saw it in New York in 2018. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about where you were in your life when you started working on it and what the genesis of it was for you.

[1:18] Aleshea Harris: Sure. So I was actually still in grad school when I started working on this piece. I was upset at the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murderer, and I just knew that I needed to make a thing. So I started working on a piece that at first seemed like it could be a traditional theater piece, and then I understood pretty quickly that I wanted to make something that was interactive, something that definitely mimicked the urgency of the issue of anti-blackness, of solving, resolving, disrupting anti-blackness. And so I wanted to make something that was participatory. I also felt quite lonely because when that happened, it was the summer, we were out of session, and I was in Castet, California, which is a really sleepy little bucolic place, and I didn't have people.

So I needed people. So I made a piece that spoke to my needs. And then I gathered my friends, my grad school friends, and we started doing the piece. Some of them had studied stage management. They weren't even necessarily actors. They were people who felt very passionately about this issue. And I'm so lucky that they gave me a yes and worked really hard with me. And we started doing the piece. We started out in a black box at the school, and we did it at the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice in South Central LA. So it was a storefront, not a traditional theater space, which felt right. And then we did it at a theater in Pasadena. We took it up to the costume shop at ACT, and you know, we were rehearsing in living rooms or found spaces, someone's warehouse at one point, really hot in the valley in the summer.

And so by the time I had the great privilege and honor of meeting Whitney and with the Movement Theater Company, this work had gone up a few times. I learned this play by putting it up. I didn't wait till I had my ducks in a row. I put it up. I was the director, producer, costume designer. I was doing the most. And I'm really pleased with Past Aleshea because I think this work, I know that this work wouldn't be what it is without my own tenacity, but also the tenacity of all the people who said yes to this piece.

[3:31] Gordon Cox: And how did you connect with Whitney? Whitney, how did you first meet Aleshea and find out about this work?

[3:36] Whitney White: I mean, I stalked her a little bit because I had read a script of hers called Is God Is. It's an incredible piece of theater that changed my life when I read it on the page. I'll never forget it. I read it, I read it and just I couldn't believe it. It was so alive. You know, script reading is its own weird thing because theater and text for performance is meant to live on stage. And so Aleshea's taught me this. Some plays are great to read, some plays are great to see, and her plays are both. They're kind of this lesson in the power of the written word and how it can be channeled on stage. And so I had read Is God Is, and then our close colleague Taby McGarr directed the production. I saw it, and I was just it was the only piece of theater I'd seen in my whole life that made me feel so close to my own experience, so close to the absurdity of life, so close to so many things that feel true to me, but also was just this aesthetically fucking excellent, like was excellent with a capital E in all caps, like writing that was forcing everyone to be at their best.

And I was like, I have to try and meet this writer. And then David, one of the leaders of the Movement Theater Company, we were both working on a show at the Atlantic Theater, and he introduced me to Aleshea and Tavy McGarr, who also directed Is God Is, funneled my name to Aleshea. So I just started whispering to everyone I knew who was like some an inch a paprika shake away from her to be like, please tell this woman about me. And then I read What to Send Up When It Goes Down, and once again, was just completely, completely bowled away by it. And I just want to call attention to what Aleshea said about this living history of What to Send Up When It Goes Down, because that is, I think, part of the dynamism of the play was that you can feel when you read, and I really recommend people read the play to see her brilliance on the page after seeing it too.

Because you can really see how this text is alive, and you can feel the layers underneath it. And I think that Aleshea herself having come from a performance and a background of performance and poetry, and then also having it be something that's been touched by so many people, you can feel it. You can feel it in the maturity of the play, in the confidence of the play. That it has a history, it has a present, and it has a future, you know.

[6:07] Gordon Cox: And can, well, I mean, when you first read it, can you describe for a little bit just sort of what the play looked like on the page when you read it? How does that change? Are there moments now as it exists and you know it's licensed by whatever theater company is doing that, whatever company is doing it? Like, are there moments where you point out where things can be tailored to individual productions? I just wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the form this show takes on the page.

[6:37] Aleshea Harris: Right. So the form of the play on the page is definitely the result of my having started out writing this piece for myself. In the beginning, I thought I don't know when or how I'm gonna meet a director. I don't want to wait to meet the perfect director. I know what this needs to be, I know where it needs to be urgent, I know what this song means, I know what this pivot is. So I didn't take a lot of time in those early days to make sure it was crystal clear what a certain moment needed to be. And I didn't handle the stage directions the way that I did with, for example, Is God Is, right? So the piece as it exists today is I think kind of like an epic poem that dances across the page. There is some play with typography, and there is instruction as to what happens in the space and how it happens.

There's instruction around people dropping paper, that's in the text. There's instruction around body percussion, there's instruction around full-bodied expression, articulation with the body and the voice of rage, for example. There's instruction around giving people time to sit with the prompts at the beginning of the piece. So there is detailed instruction. I think it'll be interesting to hear from Whitney as someone who encountered the text to for her to talk about what that encounter was. So, Whitney, please.

[7:57] Whitney White: I think the encounter, my encounter of the text, it was thrilling again. It was very different than my encountering of Is God Is because there is so much movement in the world, and everything that you see on stage is articulated on the page in one form or other. And I just I feel like I love sending it up to that because so often black artists we're marginalized in this way where people are like, oh well, you guys just devised that, or you guys just did it in this other way, right? It's like there's a right, white way to make theater, and then all the rest of us are just winging it or figuring it out, or just talented. No, there's like structural excellence here, there's intellectual excellence here, and it's all on the page in this document that Aleshea Harris wrote from A to Z, the songs, the indication of movement, the indication of tone, the indication of rhythm.

And so when I encountered it, it read to me like a piece of music. And a lot of people say that about plays, but they don't really mean it. I mean like What to Send Up When It Goes Down read like a score with tempos and pianissimos and fortees and when everybody should be on stage together, when the chaos collects itself. And my background is in music, and I just couldn't believe it. You know, it was like a conductor was kind of conducting this orchestra of black experience, and the instruments are different things in the black collective, you know, the kind of palette of grief, the palette of worship, the palette of witnessing cyclical violence, like the palette of theater making in and of itself.

Like I have to just stand it up for a moment. Like, not only is the play doing all these things, like celebrating black life, and it's also just like celebrating ensemble-based theater in this very beautiful way. So when I read it, I was kind of knocked over because it was the only play I'd read in a long time that made me feel like I was at a symphony and I was just experiencing all these things, and I started to feel like what it could look like on stage. And then I was like, I think I have to like most definitely direct this play. Please God help me.

[10:09] Gordon Cox: And I think that actually sort of leads me into one of my next questions, which was about the fact that for a play that can feel like loose or like you're improvising it or something like this. You obviously like there are structures and there are choices, and you were being very clear about what you are doing and when you are doing it, right? And I just wondered how when so many people are trained to think about the traditional structure of a play. How did you, what guided you as you thought about making those decisions of what you put together? It sounds like the musicality is a big part of it.

[10:43] Whitney White: But one thing I just want to correct if I may, and Aleshea will have more to say about it. Is like I want to just strike the word loose, and I'm not trying to police you, Gordon, like I really appreciate you, but I want to strike the word loose from that question because there's nothing loose about it. I think when people come see the play, they're struck by the many elements of the play and how creatively they're put together and how unpredictable it can be, but there's nothing loose about it. I feel like it's important to just carve that space out.

[11:10] Aleshea Harris: Did you have anything to say that you had?

[11:12] Aleshea Harris: I just want to add that some of the things, you know, what Whitney's talking about is something that happens a lot with black theater, with black art, and especially with this kind of an art, which blurs a line between ritual and theater, right? There's a way that it feels like it was written for the people who did it, or maybe I listened to them have a conversation and then jotted it down, but that's absolutely not the case. I sat down, I created a structure for this piece. I did write it with friends in mind, but I crafted this entire thing. I was very intentional about these different movements. I was very intentional about the prompts coming in the beginning, and how that sets people inside of a spiritual and psychic space where they could receive the play within a play, fixing miss, and which we see black bodies becoming furniture and all these familiar tropes inside of white-centered theater that uses black people in its margins.

So I do think that people see it and they think, oh, like somebody improvised those songs, or no, I wrote those songs. I placed them inside of the play. We needed it. It's all quite intentional and rigorous. And I think that's what Whitney is pushing up against. Thank you so much for being on the front lines about disruption of certain ideas about this play. And it's like it's not coming from a place of ego. It's like this woman just full on did all this stuff. And so now answering the really wonderful question you asked, Gordon, and I love it, it's like, how did we land on what physical shape it should take? And I think, you know, there's two elements here. There's the kind of performance as it lives in the body, and then there's also the world of design.

[12:55] Whitney White: And I just want to give a shout-out to our designers, because they are just they're juggernauts, they're amazing. Queen Jean on costumes, Yu Shen Chen on scenic, Chassie on lighting and Sinan on sound. And um, I think you know, there's vocabularies in the piece that Alicia's clear about, and because we are black women, we have a concentric kind of circle of experience. We don't have the same experience. Every black experience, and every human experience, of course, is like so different. But there are over there's overlap, you know. When she wrote the descriptions around the song, I was like, this has to be on its feet and it has to be snaking through. And then I asked myself, okay, what's a powerful physical vocabulary to do that?

And we landed on, you know, uh black step life, Greek physicality, and we landed on Hakas by the Maori people. And so, and even when Alicia directed it herself, there's things she was drawn to, and it's like we did it different ways, but I think that I kind of think of how I landed on the physical world as like this collage of black experience surrounding mourning, grief, and celebration. Like when I think of how we celebrate, how we grieve, how we pick people up and dust ourselves off when we've the world has kind of shat on us a little bit. There's this kind of all this experience that comes to light in a dramaturgical way. If I'm making sense, I'll stop talking. But um, there's all these possibilities that dramaturgically come.

Like, yes, you can go to the world of church, but you can also go to the world of step. There's so many ways to do it. And so the choreography is what I'm saying. The choreography became this really exciting uh process of like what could this be and what's in our collage that works? And there were drafts, you know, we went through a drafting process, and some things didn't work, some things were too much. One draft of the design was way overboard, as one character has to say in the play. And then we landed on something in which I think the human body could just could just shine um without being obstructed by tricks.

[15:09] Whitney White: And I wonder one thing that uh occurred to me as I was watching the show was I I wondered about the process for you and for your actors, just sort of working on it and kind of rehearsing it over and over. How did you think about sort of self-care for yourselves through all of this? Because you're sort of living in this space that uh, you know, confronting things that uh are very hard and uh kind of returning to it again and again. How what how did you think about uh kind of managing that and making sure that everyone was uh you know feeling good and healthy and you know, able to bring all of themselves and uh all of that?

[15:46] Aleshea Harris: Uh I Whitney will definitely speak to this. I will say that she's a tremendous captain of the ship, and that we came into this room, we've spoken about being mindful, especially in this context, of everything that just happened with COVID, what it means for these actors who haven't been doing this job, who haven't been engaged in this way, live and in person to return to their practice. And with the so there's the trauma of COVID, and then of course, when you're black, there's the trauma of being black. And we understand the ways that COVID disproportionately affected our community. So I think it's being in conversation. We are a group of folks who have a shared experience. A lot of times in the theater, and the cast has spoken to this, and I will speak to this.

I have been the one black person. The one, and I don't feel normalized, I feel displaced. So I think that for me, there's been healing in being placed inside of the rehearsal room for what to send up when it goes down. My sensibilities are honored and understood. We have cultural competency that we share. We kind of know some of the same music, some of the same dance moves again, not a monolith, but there is great healing just in being in the space together. That's what I'll say, Whitney.

[17:14] Whitney White: I love that. And I think one thing Alicia taught me early on is like when we're doing the ritual ritual right, it feels good to do it, actually. And it's really interesting the very few times we've had an all black audience. It's like when a character comes, says, come and says, tear their hearts out and eat them, that audience laughs. Because that brings us joy to be able to have this very private, dangerous thought that we deserve to have voiced, right? So things that might seem tragic to one audience seem like, whoo, thank God somebody said it to another. And so when we're doing it right, there is a good feeling in it. And that's also why at the end there's all these kind of circles of movement where we like pick it up and we go in to dance.

And I think, you know, Alicia's always instructing us, and I agree with this very much to not be self-indulgent. Because it's when you're in the and I'm about to talk shit about something that I really love, and I'm working on a check off soon. It's like I love checkov so much. But when you're in those four-hour checkups, and people are just like, uh, or you're in Hamlet. I use I like to use Hamlet. Lord Jesus, because people love to be miserable up in Hamlet. And I'm just like, somebody take me out to the pastor and take me out of my misery. It's just like that's not dramatic, and that's not how life is. You know, even in the most traditional cultures that practice what I'd say grieving have great grieving practices like the Jewish culture, the Hasidic culture, African cultures, you know, where it's like you're in a period of grief for a long time, you do move on.

And I think that's also honoring that kept the room pivoting, you know, you gotta keep pivoting. And so I have to say rehearsing the show is was it's just like it's just so great. The actress are so good. I'm happy you got to see them. Like, aren't they? I mean, please, everyone listening. They're amazing, they are um technically excellent, they're singers, they're movers. I hope, you know, to have another cast as splendid as they are. So rehearsal was quite special. And we've had several cast members along the way. I want to shout it out to the people Alicia worked with when she was developing it. I want to shout out to Naomi Lorraine and Namuna, Cise and Combi and all these. I mean, everyone that's touched it has just made my life so much richer, you know. So that also kept the room positive. Just the fact that you're surrounded by really dope people that you want to hang out with.

[19:48] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Alicia and Whitney right after the break.

[19:59] Gordon Cox: And now here's more with Playwright Alicia Harris and director Whitney White. Alicia, you alluded earlier to the idea that uh that to the notion that theater is not uh traditionally welcoming to uh anyone but white folks, usually, right? Like, and feeling sort of out of place in a theater or you know, not welcome in a theater. And one of the things that's uh so exciting about this piece is that it it is very upfront. You know, it is literally said in the beginning of the piece this is a place and a space and a ritual for black folks. Um, and I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about how you thought about kind of creating that space and what were there difficulties that you didn't expect as you tried to sort of figure out, figure that out as you brought the show to you know all these theaters that you've done it, um, kind of around the country at this point.

[20:53] Aleshea Harris: Yeah, so um thank you for that question. So the decision to add at the language wasn't there at the beginning, but to add language that said, this is why we're here, this is what we're here for. And the language is that um the piece is first and foremost for black people. So I'm not naive. I always understood we will have audiences that aren't just black, and I actually think it's quite useful. So it's first and foremost for black people a distinction that I want to make. And the reason that it's first and foremost for black people is that, of course, a lot of times, as you said, these theater spaces are not spaces where we're centered. We might, it might be all right that we're there, but we we might be relegated to this space psychically or or literally on the stage.

Um, I remember seeing a piece on Broadway with a black, there were black people in it. There's like one sort of central black person and sort of stereotypical role, but all the black people literally um in the margins. Um, so that's why that language is there. That language was also there because uh we had a performance in which people were kind of laughing and in a I felt like a space that didn't feel welcoming to the work or didn't feel like it was honoring that we are here to because people are dead. You can't be giggling right now. It doesn't, it doesn't seem appropriate, and we actually want you to honor these folks. And anti-blackness is such that it's just sort of um woven into the fabric of our country and our culture.

You really have to call it out. You really have to say to black people, you are welcome here. We cannot assume that I cannot assume that my people know that they are welcome. I have to say to them, you are welcome, and this is for you, because most often, oftentimes, um, it is not, right? And people don't say it's not, they don't say this place is first and foremost for white people, but we know that it is, and we're talking about spaces of education, we're talking about workspaces, we're talking about all kinds of public spaces. We're certainly talking about the theater. Your programming tells me who you're here for. Your programming tells me whose uh love life you're interested in, whose humanity you honor and you believe is inherent, right?

I have to say, I have to talk back to that, and the way that I talk back to that is by making this play and also by saying to black people, and they've and I've gotten feedback that it's it's affecting and it does something immediately to hear this space is for you. You were considered in the writing and the creation of this space. I think is critically important. Um, as far as pushback, people may feel weird, but they're not gonna say anything to my face about it. So I don't know, Gordon, you may hear from some white folks or other folks who have a problem with it. But um, but no one has told me that there's an though I have heard from a friend that that some folks' response to hearing that that language is a part of it, or that that's the the thinking that this is first and foremost for black people is oh well, I won't come then.

Well, you don't need to be there. And that's your own performance of problematic behavior that I that I would encourage such a person to do some critical reflection around. Why should it trouble anyone that an oppressed people have a space that is for them, an affinity space? We all, queer folks, black folks, Jews, all of us who are oppressed deserve those spaces, and we should celebrate them, even if we find ourselves outside of that community.

[24:06] Gordon Cox: And tell me about how the form that the uh that the show is taking here in New York, because it's doing a somewhat unusual thing, in which it like lands at a place for you know a relatively brief run at BAM, which is where I saw the show, and then it's gonna go to Playwrights Horizons a bit later this year. What sort of prompted that? And uh, do you anticipate the show changing much between now and when it uh comes around again in the fall?

[24:36] Aleshea Harris: Sure, I'll speak to what prompted that. And then Whitney, please jump in, my dear, and give space to you. So um, we actually had been programmed into Playwrights Horizons pre-COVID. Right. And then that got postponed, but they stayed committed, which is which is marvelous. And then there was some interest um from BAM and putting the work up. I think that Adam Greenfield, the artistic director of Clearwrites Horizons, had been doing tremendous work, and he's really interested in as many people seeing this uh seeing what to send up as possible. So when that opportunity arose, we were initially going to be in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. That didn't work out, and we were moved into the indoor space at the AM. Um, and it's been tremendous, and they've been really, really, really good to us thus far. Whitney, what do you have to add?

[25:21] Whitney White: I think that this show is profoundly different when and where we do it. We have done it at ART, we've done it in DC, then in Boston. Now we're back in New York, and I think the Brooklyn experience of it is going to be wildly different than the 42nd Street experience. I'm very proud that we're doing this show in both spaces because every day when I check in on the show, the on the days I check on the show, I'm amazed at how diverse and close to me the audience feels.

[25:55] Whitney White: Even the non-black members, they're people I know, they're people I'm in spaces with, and it's undeniable what doing a show on 42nd Street is 42nd Street. And the people that have access to that show is a certain group of people. Now we're very passionate about making sure that this show is accessible to everyone and the people, especially the people it's made for. And again, I always love bringing up this is a healing tool for everyone. It's made for black people in mind. I think lately I've had this interesting response, just a sidebar in terms of how the show will be different. So it's related to what I'm gonna say, but I will have to say this time around, after George Floyd, after this year and a half we just came out of, I have more and more non-black colleagues writing me and being like, just wanted to let you know I'm not coming up bam because I know it's for black people.

And I said, it's made with black people in mind, but this is a healing tool for all of us. Don't let yourself off the hook. Who said you should let yourself off the hook? And it's funny, it didn't happen before, but I do think we're living in this challenging time. We're like, oh, it's not for me. So the best way I can be in LA is to remove myself. No, that's actually very like supremacy right there. So I think 42nd Street will be very interesting because I've never seen anything like that, this there in that space. And having those people who are used to sitting comfortably in the dark with their candies while they're at Lion King, and there's all these black people on stage doing labor for them, is going to be a very profound experience.

And I'm quite curious about what form it's gonna take. There will be some changes in the installation, and of course, the show is a thing of presence, and we're honoring different people every day, and so I will say, Gordon, it surprises me how much the show changes. I uh it's not one of those unit set things, like a lot of the work I do, I pick it up, I can drop it down over here, over there, you know. But this show really is a living show. I can never predict. I can never predict what's gonna feel different. So I do think it will be very powerful at Playwright Surprises as well. And is that about the space, the actors, the current events, all of the above? Is that all what like what's what is that conversation?

[28:18] Aleshea Harris: I think it's all of the above. I think the actors are very brave and they walk off the street and walk into the play with where they're at. I cannot sit here and tell you enough about how different this company of actors, and I call them a company now, because at this point that's what it feels like. But when I think about who these people were when I met them, and I think about who they were when they stepped into rehearsal, first rehearsal at Dam, it's like remarkable. It's remarkable the change. I'm different too, if I'm honest. I'm not the same. So it's like the things I'm noticing and the things I'm changing are different. You know, the laughs hit different, the drama hits different. And I would be lying if I was like, I'll just set it and leave it.

But it's the kind of play that makes me pay attention to it, that makes me shift it when things are flat. Some things were flat in our rehearsal process, I'll be honest, that were popping before, and we had to shift it. And some things are popping now that were flat before, and that's just been fascinating.

[29:19] Whitney White: Yeah. Did you have anything to add, Alicia?

[29:21] Aleshea Harris: About uh oh, yeah, I was just gonna just lean in a little bit on, yeah. I think um, whatever the context is going to change the show. A different geographical context changes the work. I remember in DC having a moment of like, oh, these DC audiences are quite different to the audiences in New York. Some of them has to do with word having gotten out in New York by a certain time on the run about what the work was, the culture of theater in that space, who can access the space, you know, what's been going on historically with regard to the demographics that can access the space. Who is the staff at that theater? How do they feel about the work? How are they welcoming or otherwise to this radical black work that's being presented in their theater?

There are a number of things that shift the context, and then how the cast is feeling about all of the above. And certainly how I am and where I've been as the writer. I think hearing the play post COVID, and I'm a different like I started this in like 2014. It is 20. That's seven years. I am not the writer I was the first time I sat down to make this piece. So I have a real, I have to resist this urge, and Whitney helps. This urge to like just change, change, cut, cut, cutting the cut, you know, um, which is I think quite interesting. But I do wonder sometimes about continuing the legacy of the play, which has been change as it goes. I would just change it. I would just, oh, try that. That didn't work. Let's try this. So I may push back against her a little bit with love, sisterly love, in our next iteration. But um, but yeah, that the play is this ever-shifting um amoeba, and it's quite a joy.

[31:02] Whitney White: Yeah. And for both of you, how has your experience with this piece and the way it's been received and the impact you've seen it have? How has that sort of influenced the way you think about the kind of theater you want to make and the kind of projects you want to be involved in and create?

[31:22] Aleshea Harris: I mean, that's been profound for me. I just feel like the piece has made me more honest. Like, because when we were making it, I wanted to do it because I needed it. Like my story was Sandra Bland's story. And it just it changed me, and I needed this piece to feel okay. And I'm really happy that it's reaching audiences. But I took the job because I needed it. Not because I was passionate about the writer. But not because of all these kind of other reasons. Sometimes you take a play, and it's just making me re-engage with like it's forcing me to be honest when I'm reading other texts about why I should be engaged with it and what I can bring to it. And if I'm not willing to bring everything to it, I shouldn't do it, you know.

So I do think it's forcing me to be a more honest director. Because directing is different than writing. There is a technical element to directing. I think that there's a spiritual and artistic and aesthetic, you know, version of it or uh side of it, sides of directing, but there's also a technical skill, it's a technical job, just like changing the plumbing is, and you can get into this pattern of being like, well, I know what to do here, so I can do this. And I think working on what to send up forces me to engage with the text that I'm reading now in a much more honest way.

[32:51] Whitney White: What about for you, Alicia?

[32:52] Aleshea Harris: Um, so this piece has uh has had such a like I'll use the same word profound effect, I think, on my ideas about process and uh engagement and and form of a work. I um I believe in the power of putting a thing up yourself. I'm really glad that I did that, and it reminds me in these moments now when I'm I have more at my disposal, I have more resources than I did, but I don't want to lose the part of myself who just needed to be brave. And I can sort of point back to the early days of this work and say, look, girl, you can be brave, be strong, make a work that's close to you. Say the thing people don't want to hear, say it loud. People will come, right? Be formally adventurous, be audacious. It's okay for your piece to rhyme with some societal fuckery or to rhyme with your desire to disrupt some societal fuckery, right?

It's just made me believe in us and black people getting together and crying together and shouting and having uh a sense of tremendous jubilation. I think the messaging, whether it's been blatant or subtle, is so much that that we don't belong, that the way we do want to do it isn't right, that the pinnacle of this art form of ours is an a Western European um uh mode of expression. And I think that I'm reminded of a kind of dramaturgy that lives in the body, a dramaturgy of the diaspora. I'm talking about like a the cultural competency I spoke of, that there's tremendous power in that. Um, and that I can tap into that power, the things that I learned getting my MFA, but also the things that I learned um just hanging out with my mom are going to Carnival in Brooklyn, um, that that I am valid, my culture is valid as a inside of the theater.

Um, I just feel uh so honored to have met Whitney and to have met the people. I think the people have been the greatest gift for me around what to send up when it goes down the community that it's that it's created.

[35:09] Whitney White: Yeah. And as theater starts to get back on its feet after the pandemic, I have to tell you what to send up was the first uh play I've saw in a building since I don't know, March 2020, I guess. So it was very exciting and thrilling. Um, what as theater is going through this process and rebuilding and rethinking itself, hopefully as it rebuilds, what are your hopes for uh what theater can be going forward?

[35:40] Aleshea Harris: I just think um I hope that we can all be braver when looking at structure and story. There's many ways that people experience life. Um to my white colleagues that are writing, like challenge yourselves with the way you're refracting the human experience on the page. I think we all um deserve a little more to feel alive. And that's what the theater should do is make you feel alive and engage us all in these larger themes that we're questioning. And so I'm just curious about structure and form, like in this huge way, because Alicia has created this thing that explodes form and structure, and yet it's just incredibly resonant and powerful in the most realistic way. So I guess I'm saying let's all challenge realism because after the year and a half, two years we just had, I think we all can take it. And I'm excited for that. I'm excited for this next kind of phase of theater.

[36:41] Aleshea Harris: Um, I need greater equity in the theater. I need more people to be able to access this art form. I need them to understand that it belongs to them, even if they're poor, even if they can't get into an MFA program. I need people to not be getting into tremendous debt to study the theater. I need the gatekeepers to look different. I need there to be no gatekeepers. Um, I just need it to be more accessible. I mean, that people have built up all these roadblocks to um to the theater. When it started as ritual, and every culture has its theater ritual beginnings, and I'd like acknowledgement of that. I'd like for that to be taught formally and informally. And I want it to be a space of joy and audacity, and I want it to be a space of real disruption.

[37:31] Gordon Cox: Well, we look forward to that day. Um, and uh to the part that what to send up when it goes down uh has to play in that. Um, thank you both. Thank you both for joining me. It was great to talk to you.

[37:46] Gordon Cox: That was Playwright Aleshea Harris and director Whitney White on their current production of what to send up when it goes down, now playing through July 11th at the Bam Fisher Theater prior to a run this fall at Playwrights Horizons. If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, I'd really appreciate it if you took the time to rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps us grow our audience of folks who love theater as much as you and I do. Or tell a friend about Stagecraft. Find past episodes or subscribe on all the pod places, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more theater for your ears. I'll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, find me on Twitter at G Cox Variety. Thanks for listening, and see you soon.