Highlighted Play

What to Send Up When it Goes Down

Synopsis:

This work is described as a “play-pageant-ritual-homegoing celebration.” It was written to serve as a tool for collective mourning, celebration, and healing. It begins with a conversation with the audience about their experience with racialized violence and then moves into a more scripted, vignette style play. After a series of satirical scenes exploring tropes and stereotypes, the actors do a ritual “send up” of their grief and then return to addressing the audience. For the final moment, the audience is separated to for Black audience members and non-Black audience members to have their final reflections.

Recommended audience

16+

Key themes

• Racialized Violence

• Racial Stereotypes

• Police Brutality

• Collective Grief

• Healing

Sample activity

• Prior to reading the play, have the students do a Privilege Walk to open up a discussion on privilege.

• Then, instead of reading the beginning of the play, perform it with your students. Choose a real person who has been recently killed by racialized violence that your students are likely to know and 'perform' the beginning of the play with them, getting their real reactions. Allow that to lead into a discussion of race, privilege, and their personal experience before getting into reading the more scripted portion of the play.

• As a fun way to segue out of this heavy topic, end the session with creating a dance. Separate the students into groups to create a step routine. As a team, they will build a physical response to the play. You can begin with teaching them some preliminary moves before they go off to create.

Discussion questions

• Have you ever attended an interactive play before? What was that experience like?

• Initial Reactions? How did this play make you feel?

• What do you think of the use of stage directions being spoken in third person? Why does she do this and what impact does it have?

• Thoughts on the use of repetition? Is it effectively making a point and what is said point?

• What is the significance of Miss not noticing Made until she kisses her in Movement 1 and 2?

• Do you see the connection between the scripted satirical scenes and the ritual?

• What is the significance of the use of music and step?

• What do you think about separating the audience at the end? How does this impact the final moment?

• How can the tools of the ritual be used to help communities? Are they universal?

• How would you respond to Aleshea Harris' question for the non-Black audience members at the end of the play: “As a non-Black person, what is a tangible way you can disrupt the idea responsible for all of these lives needlessly taken?”

Additional Resources