Projects in Flight
For pieces I am working on that have yet to be realized or find a landing place/”homeland.” Blueprints in deep progress/process.
image featuring N’yomi Stewart, Cristina Pitter and Abigail C. Onwunali in 2023 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference reading of: love i awethu further Directed by Tamilla Woodard
‘tia pray a sound
sound and her mama, kendra, have lost a lot of memories. they gather on kendra’s back porch to try to put things back together. along the way, clowning elephants try to help sound along the journey and patriarchal shadows try to steal their dreams. can this Black mother and child witness one another by the end?
Images from 2023 Workshop Reading with Breaking the Binary Theatre Company (Founder & Producer: George Strus); Co-Directed by abigail jean-baptiste & Jaz Hall; Clowning Consultant: Jay Delise; Stage Manager: Shiku Thuo; Actors: N’yomi Stewart, Alicia Pilgrim, maleek rae, Cristina Pitter, a.k. payne, Joy Marie Thompson,
(this smoky city) our sunlite’s grove
At the edge of an old U.S. mill town, Diamond and Edi Ya work in an amusement park dripping with ghosts. Carrying stories of the places their grandparents could not enter and memories of long summers spent riding coasters and losing childhood, these chosen kin try to make sense of grief in a place of lost dreams.
Commission with Pittsburgh’s City Theatre
Image of Anita & Paul Gaines (my aunt & uncle) @ Kennywood & Kennywood sign
ark (of cypress wood)
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 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.
where pathways meet
of the ‘Black Space Plays’
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?
of a series which includes AMANI & Kofa'‘s Kin
mouth of the mississippi
on the banks of the monongahela sits a prison. apollo has spent her life staring upon it and as dementia crowds her brain she begins seeing men flying out the windows. luna joins her elder in making sense of a series of inexplicable visions as they follow
the mon
to the ohio
to the mississippi
down down to moonshine & sunshine, louisiana
in their own reversal of the great migration
Commission/Project with National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwriting Residency
kofa’s kin
of the ‘Black Space Plays’
the people
KOFA, an insomniac in graduate school for astrophysics
ESSA, a nigerian-american mother losing her memory
NI, short for amani, a partner & a best friend
BECCA, keeper of the boarding house, Caribbean-American
SAYNA, the house itself, a seer, all time & from elsewhere (space//across the sea)
Image from reading with Irons in the Fire 2024, Faultline Theater Company. Directed by Cristina Angeles. Actors: Tyler Cruz, Abigail C. Onwunali, maleek rae, Whitney Andrews.
of a series which includes AMANI & Where Pathways Meet