Similar to the satirical mocumentary styled hit comedy, Abbott Elementary, The Tony award winning musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, uses satire and parody to peel back the most serious layers of the subject matter it both critiques and celebrates, the iconic Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Spelling Bee, is a whimsical yet sardonic examination of the precarious and offbeat competitive world that six middle school aged spelling bee contestants figure out how to navigate while they poke fun at and confront life’s disappointments and joys.

Where are the African American Orthographic Champions?

The Scripps National Spelling Bee began in 1925 and today is known as the “Orthographic Super Bowl!”

·  Orthography – the art of writing words with the proper letters according to standard usage; the representation of the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols; a part of language study that deals with letters and spelling.

·      Super Bowl – a championship game played annually between champions. Pulled from – Merriam Webster Dictionary

In other words, The Scripps National Spelling Bee isn’t where winners or champions are born, its where champions thrive and shine. But alas, that’s only if you aren’t African American.

“Where they treat you well because you spell,”

~ a lyric from the play

Before you can read and write well, you must know how to spell. Spelling words is absolutely essential for intellectual and creative development and aptitude. Using spelling bees as a way for learners to accelerate their capacity to learn definitions, sounds and sentence usage is a valuable mechanism for learning read and write and to excel in life.

Historically African Americans have been virtually erased from both participation and winning the Scrips National Spelling Bee, a world-renowned competition that has become a career catalyst for not only the winners but all of the top tier participants.

History, at least as of today, continues to teach us that in the United States there was a time period when enslaved African Americans were forbidden to both read and write. Perhaps this historical cultural framing is partly the reason why there has been a presence of systemic racism within the Scripps National Spelling Bee throughout its almost 100 year history.

Like America itself, perhaps even more purely,

the Bee is a true meritocracy.

 It is the levelest of level playing fields.

~ James Maguire, American Bee

James Maguire, author of the nonfiction book, American Bee, which explores the equitability of America through the lens of the spelling bee, in the quote, “It is the levelest of level playing fields,” drives home the reality that the Scripps National Spelling Bee is only American if you aren’t African American.

If the playing field were truly level, then, the first US African American winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee would not have occurred almost 100 years after the formal beginning of the Bee in 1925. Nor would 13-year-old African American MacNolia Cox, the likely winner in the 1936 Scripps National Spelling Bee, have been cheated out of achieving champion status.

America hates losers.

~ line from the play

In 2021 the nation and the world celebrated the first US African American/Black winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Zaila Avant-garde.

While acknowledging the first black U.S. winner in 2021, we can also interrogate the revelation that throughout its 98-year existence, the systemic erasure of African American excellence and culture appear to be built into the competition.

The same kind of history and cultural erasure that today’s US Governors and other organizations are intent upon implementing with anti-woke and anti-CRT laws that are actually anti-black laws.

These contemporary laws and acts of erasure intentionally target and attempt to devalue black history, black excellence, black education, black culture and to reinforce black inferiority.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee has become a social marker for what some would call extreme intelligence. The act of participation provides those who achieve top tier status social clout and also a golden ticket giving them access to significant opportunities which culminate in financial success and upward mobility. Each year those who participate are labeled smart, worthy winners.

When the presence of African American orthographic champions at the highest level of engagement are virtually nonexistent in real life what do you do? Well, you boldly claim the opportunity to give them voice and agency through art.

With the recognition that the Scripps National Spelling Bee, like many other popular events that extol their long legacy in America, has maintained a tradition of prohibiting African American students from leveraging the fruits of competing at the highest level, Kevin McAllister’s directorial approach to the Howard University Department of Theatre Arts production is inherently revolutionary.

“This production of, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

will lean towards African American Heritage and truth.

It’s a story for and about black culture.”

~ Kevin S. McAllister, Director

The mere fact that black bodies will inhabit and embody every character in a story set somewhere in the United States at a fictional event, yet an event that is clearly infused with a kind of “pulled-from-the-headlines” white-centric milieu and attraction, is radical.

Although this musical is a made-up moment in a made-up world, there remains great power in the act of performance to shift paradigms and to push back on the typical and unfortunate accepted realities of white supremacy. Art always has the power to be an equalizer. Art can strip away the artifice of difference and the perpetrated lie that systemic racism maintains as its modus operandi, that African Americans are inherently “less than.”

I think that centering the cosmic and experiential awareness of an audience watching black youth engage in a world that historically has not been widely available to them should be a time of great celebration. 

And when you let it sink in that somewhere down the line in the legacy of the lived experience of either your ancestors or somebody else’s ancestors, that those folks could be killed if they spelled a word out loud, I hope it “hits different” when you take the stage and speak the words and live fully out loud in all your black aesthetic glory.

Although there remains much work to be done to disassemble the legacy of systemic racism, we can stand on this truth, that we are here and we know that…

“This Too is America.”