You need to experience this play-pageant-ritual-homegoing-celebration. Blending music, movement, and allegorical vignettes, the play is a unique, uplifting, and unflinching response to the physical and spiritual loss of Black lives. Though created for a Black audience, all are expressly welcome at this impactful conversation-starter. Join us in creating a joyous space for catharsis, reflection, and healing.
“This is theatre as art, exorcism, balm, and battle cry” - The New Yorker
What to Send Up When It Goes Down runs
April 14 through May 8, 2022; there will be NO performance on 4/17, Easter Sunday
Thursdays 7:30
Fridays & Saturdays 8:00
Sundays 3:00
Note: This play begins with audience members in close proximity to cast, and at that point, masks must be worn. They may be removed once audience is seated in the theatre.
There will be no ASL Interpretation on this show
Pay What You Wish Apr 21 & 24
One - Nikka Morton*
Two - Raven Lawes
Three - Lee Walter*
Four - Sky Williams*
Five - Djoré Nance*
Six - Jonah Munroe
Seven - Vandous Stripling II
Eight - Brittney Bluitt
*Member, Actors' Equity Association
Director - vickie washington*
Musical Director - Sheilah Walker
Production Stage Manager - Tiffany Cromwell*
Set and Lighting Designer - Luke Atkison
Costume Designer - Jasmine Woods
Sound Designer - Geno Young
Prop Designer - Ashley Oliver
Choreographer - Kourtney A. Surgent
Assistant Stage Manager - Karrington Davis
Technical Director - Bryan Stevenson
Associate Technical Director - Conor Clark
Master Carpenter/Scenic Artist - Allen Dean
Master Electrician - Amanda Hackney
Production Assistant - Rayven Harris
* Member, Actors' Equity Association
Aleshea Harris is the author of Is God Is (directed by Taibi Magar at Soho Rep and Ola Ince at the Royal Court), which won the 2016 Relentless Award, an Obie Award for playwriting in 2017, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award in 2019 and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. What to Send Up When It Goes Down, a play-pageant-ritual response to anti-Blackness, had its critically acclaimed NYC premiere in 2018 (directed by Whitney White and produced by The Movement Theatre Company), was featured in the April 2019 issue of American Theatre Magazine, and received a rare special commendation from the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The play was subsequently remounted at Woolly Mammoth, A.R.T., BAM and Playwrights Horizons. Her newest play, On Sugarland (directed by Whitney White) premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in the spring of 2022.
Awards: Windham-Campbell Literary Prize, Mimi Steinberg Playwriting Award, Hermitage Greenfield Prize, Horton Foote Playwriting Award, Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Harris is a two-time MacDowell Fellow and has enjoyed residencies at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Hedgebrook and Djerassi.
