A reckoning in U.S. theater
The story of Trayvon Martin that inspired Antoinette Nwandu is still of the moment.
“Pass Over” author Antoinette Nwandu, above, hopes for deep, structural change.
For playwright Antoinette Nwandu, recent conversations about systemic racism in the wake of social uprisings have felt all too familiar.
Nwandu grew up in Los Angeles and started attending West L.A.’s elite Brentwood School in the fall after the 1992 L.A. riots, which began when four police officers were acquitted in the violent beating of Rodney King.
Her award-winning play “Pass Over” — centered on two young black men, Moses and Kitch, struggling to survive and thrive — was partly inspired by the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin. Mixing elements from Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and the biblical Exodus saga, Nwandu wrote the play as a mirror to the effects of white privilege and police brutality on Black lives.
The play forced difficult conversations about race and bias in theater.
Chicago’s theater community rallied around Nwandu after the play’s 2017 premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre, partly because of a Chicago Sun-Times review that said Nwandu’s portrayal of a white officer was “wrongheaded and self-defeating” and that much of the violence in the Black community “is perpetrated within the community itself.”
Just one day before the play’s California premiere last year, the Echo Theater in L.A. canceled “Pass Over” because of a contentious relationship between the director, who is Black, and the L.A. theater’s white producers.
Nwandu, now based in Brooklyn, recently joined hundreds of other prominent theater-makers of color in signing the “We See You, White American Theater” protest statement calling out institutional racism in reaction to civil unrest.
In the past, the vicious cycle of Black pain was a sign to start working. Now, Nwandu is prioritizing rest.
“After the rehearsals, and the openings, and the interviews and the parties, when you’re just sitting alone with yourself, the trauma is still present,” she said. “After my work on ‘Pass Over’ was done, the ache was still there.”
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
You’ve talked about your feelings around the death of Trayvon Martin while writing “Pass Over.” How do you feel now, and how have you been processing everything going on?
I feel deep mourning and sadness and a sense that the lives — George Floyd‘s life, Breonna Taylor‘s life — their lives are individually and beautifully, uniquely important.
As far as my life goes, I was able to alkalize those feelings into something I thought I could put out into the world to make change, and now I don’t know. It feels like Groundhog Day, because people are like, “Oh, the play is still relevant.” There’s that constant fight between the part of me that’s like, “I want people to see my play; I want people to see this art,” and like, “Oh, God, I hate that people see this play and that it’s still relevant.” The thing that makes it successful is the continued pain and the continued violence against individual Black people by this white supremacist police state.
I would love this play to fade away and not be relevant anymore — when people are like, “Oh, that relic of the past.”
And then creatively, what do I do this time? How do I meet this moment with my creative fire this time? Because the problems are still here.
How are you practicing self-care during this time?
Through stepping back from social media. And doing some personal work, setting up an altar in my house and literally just like a sanctuary of healing and rest.
Many theaters have been putting out statements of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement or justice for George Floyd on social media. How have you felt about this outpouring of support?
That’s one of the things that caused me to step back. I keep coming back to that sense of ambivalence. Because
on one hand, I’m deeply hopeful. But on the other hand, we are all performers. My hope is that the performance in the moment does not dissipate, does not evaporate from our collective consciousness.
And that it is the first step of deep structural change, which includes everything from certain people vacating posts of leadership, groundlevel financial redistribution of wealth and finances, redistribution of time.
I accept the emotion of the moment, but I hope that the emotion of the moment is fuel to continue change.
Could you talk about your own experience as a Black woman who has made it in theater?
On one hand, I’m grateful for the success of “Pass Over.” When I think about my experience and when I think about where I am as far as my relationship with my artistic self, I still see that I have so much to learn. This is a moment where I’m stepping back and letting the people who I look to as successes lead me and teach me.
What has it been like for you in theater? What challenges have you faced within the institution of theater?
I will go to the hopeful side. My experience of myself as a Black woman in the theater feels so deeply intertwined and interconnected with my Black female peers.
And so, my growth is deeply, deeply connected to the growth of other Black women playwrights like Katori Hall, like Dominique [Morisseau], like Lynn Nottage, like Aziza Barnes, like C.A. Johnson.
Yes, I have faced institutional racism. Yes, I have felt like I’m knocking on a wall that doesn’t even have a door. But I never feel like I’m doing that by myself, in this moment, in real time.
Whereas when I look to some of my ancestors and some of the women that I learned from one, two generations back, it feels like their reporting on what they faced was so much more isolated and singular. I’m thinking of people like Adrienne Kennedy. I’m thinking of people like Seret Scott; — I’ve worked with her now.
I have to lead with gratitude if I’m going to have a good evening. And part of my gratitude is I never feel like I’m fighting alone.
Are there any experiences that you’ve found particularly uplifting?
Everything that happened at Steppenwolf was uplifting. The way the ChiTAC [Chicago Theater Accountability Coalition] community lifted me up. I felt seen and taken care of by people who were strangers to me. And I still have connections and relationships with people where it’s again the sense that you’re not fighting alone.
When we share those stories, when we collectivize, it becomes a more socialist model. A model where phrases that seemed crazy, like the redistribution of wealth or universal healthcare, can actually become realistic.
What kind of specific and actionable changes would you like to see theater gatekeepers make to move the culture forward, past the social media posts?
The complete upheaval of leadership at institutions of every size. The redistribution of institutional money and the transparency of how that money is spent. A radical reimagining of the audiences in these institutions — so who are we spending the money on? And who are we spending the money for so that the artistic offerings themselves are attractive across class, race, gender narratives. I think all of those are intertwined, because when leadership changes, vision changes, hiring practices change. Every decision point changes.
Is there anyone who is doing this kind of work now or institutions already on the path toward this model?
I think about Nataki Garrett at Oregon Shakes [Oregon Shakespeare Festival]. I think about Stephanie Ybarra at Baltimore Center Stage. I think we were in the precursor conversation about this. And now, because of the combination of pandemic plus everybody has the time, plus deep unrest, I think those beginning steps are now maybe not enough.
What are you working on now and what’s next for you?
I am right now going back to square one in doing the personal work so that when I do begin to write again for the stage, I will know myself and I will have divested myself of some of my own internalized, institutional racism and the wounds that I’ve had. And then for paying my bills, I’m working on TV, film stuff.
If I could write the perfect play to heal the world — but I’m not, I can’t do it by myself. That’s the thing, the hope and the cynicism are there but I’m investing in the hope. What a moment — how do people create things right now? I don’t know.