Directors Note

I am Black.

I am woman.

I am protest.

I am demands for police accountability.

I am abolitionist.

I am joker, practitioner and multiplier.

I am South-side Chicago.

I am citizen.

I am dreamer.

I am my ancestors’ dream.

I am fruition.

Am community, community builder.

Am love in action.

Am educator, teaching artist, administrator.

Youth worker, youth listener.

I use my adult privilege to take up space and give it back to them.

I am guide.

I am granddaughter to a Southside preacher, who swindled the city to get the land on which our church stands, the church he built, for a dollar.

I am big sister.

I’m an artist. I’m an organizer. It took me a while to claim either identity, not feeling I had earned either title, but that’s who I am, that’s what I do.I make participatory theatre.

I thrive with ensemble based work.

I am an applied theatre practitioner, which means most often I seek to make theatre with communities about issues that impact them.

I wanted to apply that practice to this project, but also stretch myself as an artist to “write a play."

The process I have created seeks to honor both of those.

~ Quenna Lené Barrett

I wrote the words above in what now feels like another time and place entirely, in the "before times". Before August of this year, I did not want to do a virtual play. The original idea was for people to be able to be together, exploring the play's questions with their bodies and through collective inquiry. Something shifted, both outside and within me, and very quickly we assembled the team of artists that you will see shortly. I will be forever grateful for that shift. Somehow the ensemble tapped into dreams of mine that I had not articulated, and expanded those dreams beyond my wildest imagination. This play may is nowhere near what I thought it would be; it is worlds better.

To my cast and creative team, thank you. You are force and freedom and fulfillment.

To the audience, thank you for being here. Play and dream and heal with us.