Antoinette Nwandu
Playwright Biography
wordsmith. storyteller. scribe.
Antoinette Nwandu was born and raised in Los Angeles, California and is now a New York City based playwright. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with her bachelor's degree in English, the University of Edinburgh with a master's degree in Cultural Politics, and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with a M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing. It was during her time as an undergraduate writing for the Harvard Crimson that Antoinette realized her passion for playwriting. As reported in The New York Times article, "A Play Caught in the Crossfire" by Laura Collins-Hughes, "she realized that the most tedious part of reporting was getting quotes when she already knew what she wanted people to say... a journalist's scandal, a playwright's skill." Along with being a playwright, she has also written for a 2019 episode of Spike Lee’s TV show She’s Gotta Have It and has been featured as an actress in a short film called Charity in 2015. Antoinette also served as a professor of Public Speaking and Introductory Theatre at Borough of Manhattan Community College from 2008 to 2016.
Her works have been featured at The MacDowell Colony, The Sundance Theater Lab, The Cherry Lane Mentor Project (mentor: Katori Hall), The Kennedy Center, P73, PlayPenn, Space on Ryder Farm, Southern Rep, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This Time Festival, and The Movement Theater Company. She is an alum of the Ars Nova Play Group, the Naked Angels Issues PlayLab, the Dramatists Guild Fellowship, and the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference Fellow.
Highlighted Play: Pass Over
Synopsis
The show opens with Kitch and Moses, two young Black males (late teens to early twenties--who live in current times but are also American slaves in 1855, and also Israelites from the Exodus story in The Bible) waiting on an urban street. The men spend their evenings dreaming of futures beyond their current circumstances and what their personal “Promise Lands” could look like. Their plans are continuously interrupted by gunshots and the likes of Mister and Ossifer, who perpetuate the fear that the police will end their lives the way they have for the majority of their friends. As a last resort to save themselves from Ossifer’s violence, Kitch and Moses decide to take matters into their own hands by speaking their truths and summoning the biblical plagues of old. While attempting to leave their street and journey to the Promise Land, Moses and Kitch are taken by surprise with the reappearance of Mister, who, in order to save himself and what is “his,” shoots Moses and kills him.
Educational Context
Pass Over can be used in a multitude of educational settings. The play can be used in a high school or collegiate theatre classroom as highlighted below in the "Sample Activity," or in a Social Studies, History, and/or English classroom as a way to examine the emotional and societal trauma inflicted upon the Black community in current-day America, the America of 1855, and even the Israelites in biblical Egypt. This play can also be used for a study of the power and effects of language and rhetoric, especially through contrasting the speech of Moses and Kitch with that of Mister.
Pass Over Discussion Questions/Prompts
Discuss Antoinette Nwandu’s use of language and how this affects not only the plot and the characters but also the audience’s experience.
How important are the meanings of words? Consider the multiple meanings of the title and what that means for the characters and the audience as participants.
What is the importance of a name?
Do we “possess” anything? If so, what and how is this determined?
Discuss the importance of the picnic scene and Mister’s first entrance.
Discuss the pie as a symbol.
Is there validity in the phrase, “speaking things into existence”? And if so, how?
Sample Classroom Activity: Code-switching
Teacher will have prepared a list of character types.
(mother, loner, nerd, boss, peacemaker, egomaniac, villain, cop, teacher, doctor, politician, custodian, rich, middle class, homeless, soldier, preacher, elderly, teenager, adult)
Preface:
Teachers will draw students’ attention to the absence of punctuation and emotional/stage directions provided in their scripts.
Students should be encouraged to experiment with intonation and how each line will be delivered.
Students will be instructed to perform the scenes twice:
Once on their own without any character type influence
Second time utilizing their character types to guide their performance
Activity:
Pt 1:
Split the class into groups of three.
Students will be given copies of their “open scenes” (unbeknownst to them a scene from Pass Over).
Each group will perform the scene.
Pt 2:
Each group will then be given a bag with slips of paper which contain character types on them.
Each student will pick out a piece of paper from the bag and share their types with each other.
Based on a rotation, students will portray each character A, B, and C using their selected descriptions.
Pt 3: Discussion & Observations
How did the absence of punctuation and any stage direction/emotional direction affect your portrayal of the characters?
How did the addition of the character types affect your portrayal of the characters?
What inspiration did you draw from in order to create your character based on the selected character type?
Classroom Activity Scene
A: well
B: well salutations
A: yes
good evening
B: yes
good evening salutations
A: salutations
and good night
C: yes
good night
and salutations
to you both
B: yes
yes
salutations
and good night
C: good night
A: good night
C: and if i may
a word of warning
dangerous fellas
on the loose around these parts
now I’ll protect you both
for sure
but
all the same
just
watch yourselves
A: gosh
look at the time
we really should be going
C: yes good night
say
don’t I know you fellas
B: no
C: you sure
you look like fellas
i might know
B: you don’t know us
C: say
what’s your name
End of Scene
*Scene taken from Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu, pages 58-60, ©2018 acting edition by Samuel French.
Code-switching Definition:
Sociolinguistics: the use of one dialect, register, accent, or language variety over another, depending on social or cultural context, to project a specific identity.
Suggestion of a Socratic seminar to follow the reading of Pass Over:
Every student is responsible for having questions or points to bring to the seminar.
The inner circle will have the discussion first.
The outer circle will observe and take notes about responses, points, or trends they see; comparing other students’ analyses to their own and comparing or relating them to other texts or even current world events.
Annotated Play: Breach...
BREACH: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate
The play focuses on Margaret, a young Black woman who is struggling with one, trying to find enjoyment in her unfulfilling position teaching at a community college; two, trying to decide if she will continue with her destined-for-failure relationship with her White boyfriend, Nate, or if she will pursue a relationship with her new boss, Rasheed, a Black man who turned his life around after a troubled past; three, while trying to make sense of being unexpectedly expecting; and four, most importantly, trying to discover her own identity.
Comprehensive List of Plays
4 Sustenance (contributor)
Black Boy & the War
BREACH: a manifesto of race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate
FLAT SAM
Pass Over
Tuvalu or, The Saddest Song
Vanna White Must Die
Additional Resources
Code-switching
Amazon Studios presents Pass Over
The Build Series: Pass Over
The inspiration behind Pass Over
Bibliography
Related Scholarly Articles
Herd, D. (2020). Cycles of threat: Graham v. Connor, police violence, and african american health inequalities. Boston University Law Review, 100(3), 1047-1067.
Smith Lee, J. R., & Robinson, M. A. (2019). “That’s my number one fear in life. It’s the police”: Examining young black men’s exposures to trauma and loss resulting from police violence and police killings. Journal of Black Psychology, 45(3), 143-184.
Vlach, S. K., Taylor, L., & Mosley Wetzel, M. (2019). “Exploring this whole thing of social justice” Narrative as a tool for critical sociocultural knowledge development in teacher education. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 14(1), 62-77.
Interview
Douglass, S. (2018, March 2). Why we need black antiheroes, with Antoinette Nwandu. The Clyde Fitch Report. [Podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.clydefitchreport.com/2018/03/antoinette-nwandu-podcast-antiheroes/
Other Biographical and Play Resources
Bio. (2018). Retrieved from http://antoinettenwandu.com/bio
Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate. (2020). Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://victorygardens.org/event/breach-a-manifesto-on-race-in-america-through-the-eyes-of-a-black-girl-recovering-from-self-hate/
Cornelius, R. (2018). BREACH: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate study guide [Study guide]. Chicago, Illinois: Victory Gardens Theatre.
Nwandu, A. (2018). Pass over. Grove Press.
Pass over play guide 2019 [Study guide]. (2019). Chicago, Illinois: A Contemporary Theatre.
Zezima, K. (2006, September 30). When soldiers go to war, flat daddies hold their place at home. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com
Reviews of Plays
Bishop, N. (2018, February 22). Breach by Antoinette Nwandu. Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://www.berkshirefinearts.com/02-22-2018_breach-by-antoinette-nwandu.htm
Hayford, J. (2018, February 16). Antoinette Nwandu's breach fails to live up to its potential. Chicago Reader. Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/antoinette-nwandu-breach-victory-gardens/Content?oid=41543756
Jones, C. (2018, February 17). 'Breach' is an earlier--and more predictable--play by 'pass over' writer Nwandu. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/ct-ent-breach-victory-gardens-review-0219-story.html
Schwob, O. (2020, February 14). Deep roots. Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/montage-deep-roots