2 minute read
Reflections on Pass Over from MTC Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis
REFLECTIONS ON PASS OVER
from MTC Artistic Director JASSON MINADAKIS
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I first read Pass Over in 2016. It was devastating. And brilliant. And I picked it up and immediately read it again. There are few times in my career I can remember this happening. This is one of those plays that changed how I thought about theatre and changed the way I thought about the world. We gave Pass Over our 2017 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize because it was hands down the best play we read that year. It is one of the best plays I have ever read.
And Pass Over has done something that not many other plays have done. It has changed with the times in which it is being performed and exists to date in three distinct versions. The 2015 text was first produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2017 and from it exploded a Chicagoland, and then a national, conversation about young Black men dying on America’s streets, racism in the American theatre and specifically racism in theatre criticism. Next, Spike Lee filmed that production with some modifications to reflect the country in the wake of the 2016 election, and that 2018 text is preserved for posterity as an Amazon Prime film. Thirdly, in this performance at Marin Theatre Company, you will see the 2021 text which was first performed in August 2021—the play that reopened Broadway.
In crafting this work of art, Antoinette has brought to the stage the American epidemic of Black men being murdered for being Black. In the 2021 version which you are about to see, she portrays the world through the lens of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, America’s ongoing racial reckoning and the world’s slow reopening. I wish it were possible to bring you all three versions in their order of creation. I urge you, after this production, to seek out the filmed version and a production of the original 2015 text.
The scope of Antoinette’s vision of Pass Over cannot be contained within one artistic experience. Thank you for being part of this one. I hope her act of creation changes you. I hope you can take her message and help make change out there in the world.
