This play loves Black women and nonbinary people boundlessly. It takes for granted their complexity and worthiness. This colonial English language cannot hold the fullness of Black queerness, with its many tenors and shades of ways of being. But I name queerness here to say: This play loves ancestors that were before and outside colonial ideas of gender, sexuality, and the body. This play loves ancestors who were robbed of language to hold their full selves, who were marked down as “men” and “women,” with both of those words meaning “property.” This play loves Black people, and specifically Black women and Black queer folk and Black nonbinary people, right here and right now. This play loves people who are yet to come, who will have ways of naming and being that we cannot yet say or imagine. This play imagines that the gestures, rhythms, and kinships that today are identified as Black and queer came before and will last beyond the need for those labels. As scholar Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley writes, “Queer not in the sense of a “gay” or same-sex loving identity... but as a praxis of resistance... loving your own kind when your kind was supposed to cease to exist.”1
This play is not for Yale. It dreams beyond every plantation, every jail, every stifling container, and Yale is one. So doing it here is, in a way, a rehearsal. But it is also an action. We have carved out a time and place where we commit to conjuring freedom. Not as an endpoint but as action, openness, possibility, flux. To do this conjuring requires care, patience, and love. It has been a deep honor to join in this work. This play asks us to break the plantations inside ourselves, so that we might reach for each other and make contact towards a shared future. I can speak only as myself, a light-skinned, nonBlack Latinx woman with many white ancestors, who has lived and worked in supremacist academia for a long time. There is no question that my love is imperfect, that I have hurt and will continue to hurt, simply through the saturation of living in a profoundly anti-Black society. But I can say that In my time with this extraordinary company, I was called closer to myself every day. I hope to keep the spirit of the work our company has done together reverberating through my work for the rest of my life. We will have to make freedom again and again. love i awethu further names the deep unfreedom of our now, as it challenges us to meet and exceed its love. There is a place for everyone in revolution, and in love, if we are willing. So let this be the beginning of our loving further.
love i awethu further
—Emma Pernudi-Moon, Production Dramaturg
1 Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley; BLACK ATLANTIC, QUEER ATLANTIC: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage. GLQ 1 June 2008; 14 (2-3): 191–215. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2007-030
LANGSTON HUGHES FESTIVAL OF NEW WORK | 2021–22 SEASON
NOVEMBER 16–19, 2021 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean Florie Seery, Associate Dean Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., Assistant Dean
PRESENTS
love i awethu further by a.k.
payne (she/they) directed by Jacob Basri (he/his)
Creative Team
Cast
Production Dramaturg
Callie (she/her)
Emma Pernudi-Moon (she/any) Stage Manager Joanie Polk (she/her) Assistant Stage Manager Nakia Shalice Avila (she/her)
Portia (she/her)
Alexandra Maurice (she/her)
Whitney Andrews (she/her)
Beneatha (they/them) maal imani west (they/them)
Cinna (she/her)
Girl/Who Tries to Fly (she/her)
Janiah Francois (she/her) Antoinette/Amandla (she/her)
Cleopatra Mavhunga (she/her)
Tavia Elise Hunt (she/her)
Awethu (she/they)
Mistress (she/her)
Abigail C. Onwunali (she/her)
Madeline Seidman (she/her)
Out of respect for the range of gender identities represented, we are making sure to speak about the company as a group of ‘Black women and non-binary folks.’ We ask that everyone use this language too. —Jacob Basri, director This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.
Setting
Production Staff
Antebellum, something like Virginia also time is made by he who hold the power so take the era with a grain of salt in our time this is perhaps tomorrow too Three Cabins—Callie’s, Portia’s and Awethu’s which hold space for the fields The church house & The Mistress’ House behind which is a great oak tree the front of which is a large porch
Associate Safety Advisors
Annabel Guevara Eric Walker
Associate Production Manager
Aholibama Castañeda González Run Crew
Karl Green Aidan Griffiths Juhee Kim
Administration Associate Managing Director
There will be a 10-minute intermission.
Emma Rose Perrin
Special Thanks
Jacob Santos
Assistant Managing Director
Madeline Seidman, Whitney Andrews, and Alexandra Maurice for their assistance in costume design
Management Assistant
front illustration by blackpowerbarbie, Amika Cooper, as seen in The Lenny Letter.
Chloe Knight
A.J. Roy
House Manager Production Photographer
Leigh Busby All patrons must wear masks at all times while inside the theater. Our staff, backstage crew, and artists will also be masked at all times. The taking of photographs or the use of recording devices of any kind in the theater without the written permission of the management is prohibited. Yale University acknowledges that Indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year. The Langston Hughes Festival of New Work productions are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process. THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.
NOVEMBER 16–19, 2021 DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean Florie Seery, Associate Dean Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., Assistant Dean
PRESENTS
love i awethu further by a.k.
payne (she/they) directed by Jacob Basri (he/his)
Creative Team
Cast
Production Dramaturg
Callie (she/her)
Emma Pernudi-Moon (she/any) Stage Manager Joanie Polk (she/her) Assistant Stage Manager Nakia Shalice Avila (she/her)
Portia (she/her)
Alexandra Maurice (she/her)
Whitney Andrews (she/her)
Beneatha (they/them) maal imani west (they/them)
Cinna (she/her)
Girl/Who Tries to Fly (she/her)
Janiah Francois (she/her) Antoinette/Amandla (she/her)
Cleopatra Mavhunga (she/her)
Tavia Elise Hunt (she/her)
Awethu (she/they)
Mistress (she/her)
Abigail C. Onwunali (she/her)
Madeline Seidman (she/her)
Out of respect for the range of gender identities represented, we are making sure to speak about the company as a group of ‘Black women and non-binary folks.’ We ask that everyone use this language too. —Jacob Basri, director This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.
Setting
Production Staff
Antebellum, something like Virginia also time is made by he who hold the power so take the era with a grain of salt in our time this is perhaps tomorrow too Three Cabins—Callie’s, Portia’s and Awethu’s which hold space for the fields The church house & The Mistress’ House behind which is a great oak tree the front of which is a large porch
Associate Safety Advisors
Annabel Guevara Eric Walker
Associate Production Manager
Aholibama Castañeda González Run Crew
Karl Green Aidan Griffiths Juhee Kim
Administration Associate Managing Director
There will be a 10-minute intermission.
Emma Rose Perrin
Special Thanks
Jacob Santos
Assistant Managing Director
Madeline Seidman, Whitney Andrews, and Alexandra Maurice for their assistance in costume design
Management Assistant
front illustration by blackpowerbarbie, Amika Cooper, as seen in The Lenny Letter.
Chloe Knight
A.J. Roy
House Manager Production Photographer
Leigh Busby All patrons must wear masks at all times while inside the theater. Our staff, backstage crew, and artists will also be masked at all times. The taking of photographs or the use of recording devices of any kind in the theater without the written permission of the management is prohibited. Yale University acknowledges that Indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year. The Langston Hughes Festival of New Work productions are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process. THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.
This play loves Black women and nonbinary people boundlessly. It takes for granted their complexity and worthiness. This colonial English language cannot hold the fullness of Black queerness, with its many tenors and shades of ways of being. But I name queerness here to say: This play loves ancestors that were before and outside colonial ideas of gender, sexuality, and the body. This play loves ancestors who were robbed of language to hold their full selves, who were marked down as “men” and “women,” with both of those words meaning “property.” This play loves Black people, and specifically Black women and Black queer folk and Black nonbinary people, right here and right now. This play loves people who are yet to come, who will have ways of naming and being that we cannot yet say or imagine. This play imagines that the gestures, rhythms, and kinships that today are identified as Black and queer came before and will last beyond the need for those labels. As scholar Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley writes, “Queer not in the sense of a “gay” or same-sex loving identity... but as a praxis of resistance... loving your own kind when your kind was supposed to cease to exist.”1
This play is not for Yale. It dreams beyond every plantation, every jail, every stifling container, and Yale is one. So doing it here is, in a way, a rehearsal. But it is also an action. We have carved out a time and place where we commit to conjuring freedom. Not as an endpoint but as action, openness, possibility, flux. To do this conjuring requires care, patience, and love. It has been a deep honor to join in this work. This play asks us to break the plantations inside ourselves, so that we might reach for each other and make contact towards a shared future. I can speak only as myself, a light-skinned, nonBlack Latinx woman with many white ancestors, who has lived and worked in supremacist academia for a long time. There is no question that my love is imperfect, that I have hurt and will continue to hurt, simply through the saturation of living in a profoundly anti-Black society. But I can say that In my time with this extraordinary company, I was called closer to myself every day. I hope to keep the spirit of the work our company has done together reverberating through my work for the rest of my life. We will have to make freedom again and again. love i awethu further names the deep unfreedom of our now, as it challenges us to meet and exceed its love. There is a place for everyone in revolution, and in love, if we are willing. So let this be the beginning of our loving further.
love i awethu further
—Emma Pernudi-Moon, Production Dramaturg
1 Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley; BLACK ATLANTIC, QUEER ATLANTIC: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage. GLQ 1 June 2008; 14 (2-3): 191–215. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2007-030
LANGSTON HUGHES FESTIVAL OF NEW WORK | 2021–22 SEASON