November 2021

*..a culminating workshop to be proud of! We had large audiences across the three presentation times, and the diverse audience's engagement in the 'after-reflections' were amazing.. - equally, they were a reminder of thoughts I'd been mulling at the very beginning of the journey of this work, and in those first sharing's  of the script..

Nestled in this experience of a young black gay artist reaching over empty sockets of memories is a rubric's cube of "black family members", who each etch journeys out of unspoken 'trauma', challenges, and choices embedded in their past..

In this, the audience as Witness collects each hidden trauma and truth, resulting in omniscience; while in the world of the play, a character might share themself to the audience, as an aside of perspective, but awareness does not alleviate their circumstance of burden, or -of itself- change trajectory of their journey; the consequence of knowing.. in a space of unspoken - is an audience's  critical view into ways of 'understanding'- if not, as well, into finding itself in unimagined empathy..

..this axis of omniscient entry is also a potential 'trigger' for many who had no idea how deeply their own experiences of family and color had been vaulted away without question, excised with death, or hardened into bloodline of achievements and expectations..

This work is a black America drama. A rending into the undiscussed for audiences of color, who sit in its unfolding and expanse as new experience of Witness; how do we prepare for conversation afterwards?

-or of trauma in the reflection? 

(..continuing)