Erika Dickerson-Despenza
@blkplaywright
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The Sirène of Blk insurgency in American Theater | Cultural Memory Worker | Creator & Steward: Ntozake Shange Social Justice Playwriting Residency
New Orleans
Joined January 2010
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I don’t believe in peaceful non-violence in the face of & in response to violence. In my “love & light” praxis, the light is a lit match & the love is my ancestors’ breath helping to burn ALL this shit down.
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Toni Cade Bambara’s question, “what are we pretending not to know today?” is so important because it urges us to look at what we don’t want to see; she moves us toward reckoning with the fantasies & delusion that are more comfortable & appealing than truth. Whew.
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My full letter to Victory Gardens Theater & the general public (specifically audience members) regarding my pulling of CULLUD WATTAH.
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I know everyone is reading Octavia Butler “in these times”—as we should— but might I also offer that reading Toni Cade Bambara is just as important, particularly for organizers, healers and artists.
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On today, Lorraine Hansberry & Malcolm X’s birthday, may we writers & aspiring radical leftists remember their rigor, do our reading & engage in sustained & earnest struggle together.
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too many pulitzers, macarthur awards, vogue features & tony nominations. not enough political integrity, solidarity, commitment & aligned action. 🙂🙃
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Because the absence of a clear, consistent political commitment makes this kind of cultural work & ancestral work empty. it’s a beautiful but hollow. simply another Blk aesthetic packaged as an identity & sold back to us. This must be included in a Black feminist critique.
such a talent. such a visionary. such a student of music. it’s such a shame she refuses to be a student of Blk struggle instead of a symbol who undermines it at every turn.
free palestine. free the congo. free haiti. free sudan. free new orleans. free “cancer alley.” free.
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such a talent. such a visionary. such a student of music. it’s such a shame she refuses to be a student of Blk struggle instead of a symbol who undermines it at every turn.
free palestine. free the congo. free haiti. free sudan. free new orleans. free “cancer alley.” free.
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It’s actually quite devastating that the musical artist of our lifetime is Our political enemy, one who not only colludes with but delights in the empire. What an American life. 🫠
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New Orleans continues to be where the future arrived first. Those in disbelief that the Houston power outage is a man-made disaster, who are in awe of government failure must re/member New Orleans, the state-sanctioned, man-made disaster, & pre & post-Katrina government failure.
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I’ve yet to see an accurate headline regarding my pulling CULLUD WATTAH. In the first line of my letter I intentionally say “white supremacist capitalist patriarchal values espoused by the Board of Directors.” Somehow only racism made the news. Btw, the Board president is Blk. 🙃
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THREAD ON SUPPORTING THE CAST
Thank you for your outpour of support. Many of you have privately asked how you can support the Chicago cast of CULLUD WATTAH while we explore the possibility of finding a new theatrical home for the Chicago run...
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I write footnotes in my plays. I include bibliographies. It’s important to me for people to do the reading to understand my work; to read the Black women I read to understand how I’m working within, expanding & challenging the tradition. Seeing my play is not doing the reading.
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Them: You’re a playwright, yes? I know you can’t wait to be on Broadway!
Me: I’m a cultural worker & organizer whose work reflects & builds on the Blk radical tradition. My life queers the archive of Blk radical joy, ancestral magick & revolution. & Broadway should be abolished.
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I accepted my PEN America award on my dad’s birthday & got to bring my mom as my date. I got to publicly name/honor
@hystericalblkns
@imaniperry
@TheRealKristaF
& many other Blk women whose words have & continue to change me. Women we must read. A time was had. ❤️
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The American theater is so unserious about solidarity. Also, abolish Broadway immediately. I’ve said for years now that Broadway does not care about people, just profit & every year they outdo themselves in proving just that.
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Anyway, a work that was thundering through me opened. & working class & poor Blk people of every generation affirmed the work & felt they had a stake in it. That’s the only review that matters to me, truly. All power & voice to the people, Blk people, who are my business. ✊🏾
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spiting white people is not a substantial political commitment. it, in fact, centers the white gaze.
Because the absence of a clear, consistent political commitment makes this kind of cultural work & ancestral work empty. it’s a beautiful but hollow. simply another Blk aesthetic packaged as an identity & sold back to us. This must be included in a Black feminist critique.
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The first published script of CULLUD WATTAH will be out in the world very soon. I am grateful to the many Blk women grad students, Blk women scholars & teachers who’ve reached out about teaching my play &/or using its monologues for showcases. I hope y’all buy the book. ❤️
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I woke up with more reflections about the missed opportunities for rigorous criticism regarding CULLUD WATTAH. Y’all not gone Arthur Miller & Caryl Churchill me my whole damn career & think I’m supposed to be grateful for the comparisons. No.
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Before the pandemic, I was on track to create an interactive, multi-genre digital syllabus for CULLUD WATTAH with
@PublicTheaterNY
. Y’all want the syllabus or nah?
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CULLUD WATTAH is a show for Blk people, specifically Blk women & girls. Everybody else may come to witness & be witnessed. But here is my personal invite to Blk people, because above all, Blk people are my business. Word to auntie Toni Cade Bambara.
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I created something for Us. 🥹❤️✊🏾
The
@PublicTheaterNY
and
@BarnardCenter
have announced the Ntozake Shange Social Justice Theater Residency. It is conceived by playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza
@blkplaywright
, who also be the first resident playwright in the fully salaried program
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REGARDING PERFORMANCE RIGHTS: I made the decision to require an intimacy director [of the global majority] for any university or professional production of CULLUD WATTAH. If an institution does not comply, they cannot have the rights, as it is written into the contract.
The first published script of CULLUD WATTAH will be out in the world very soon. I am grateful to the many Blk women grad students, Blk women scholars & teachers who’ve reached out about teaching my play &/or using its monologues for showcases. I hope y’all buy the book. ❤️
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How different things might be if, rather than saying "I think I'm in love," we were saying "I've connected with someone in a way that makes me think I'm on the way to knowing love." Or if instead of saying "I am in love" we say "I am loving" or "I will love." 1/2
— bell hooks
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Hey, Hello, Hi. This is a reminder that I don’t be studying reviews by non-Blk people & men, namely because y’all are lazy & haven’t done the required reading of Blk women’s work (dramas, theory, fiction & poetry) to even understand the Blk radical tradition in which I’m working.
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Folks who won’t even wear a mask talmbout how much they care about people’s safety abroad and I…LMAO.
PEOPLE ARE SO POLITICALLY UNSERIOUS.
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i am on the other side of the rainbow/ picking up pieces of the days spent waitin for the poem to be heard/ while you listen/ I have other work to do/
— Ntozake Shange
•
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•
thank you. gonna go rest, reflect, & conjure. ❤️✌🏾
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Hey y’all!
28. NYC based, Chicago born, New Orleans rooted. Playwright, foodie, bookish traveler. Open to all genders. Open to dating possibilities & friends.
#Twinder
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I want to remind folks that I’m an EARLY-CAREER playwright. I have no net worth. I’ve only had one play produced (another in the works) & some tv/film stuff in development. But it was important to me to not wait until “I made it” to create something for Us.
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Are there any studies or papers on how much of our paychecks Blk women actually keep for themselves after helping family members, etc.? I’m interested in what the salaries actually are after that, let alone bills & the commissary money we send to our incarcerated folks.
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Today while on a panel at The Public I said that Broadway needs to be abolished & urged folks to read The Salt Eaters. Several folks have contacted me saying they’re buying the book & plan to read it immediately. If I don’t accomplish anything else today that is enuf for me.
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Anyway, don’t invite me to your march, play, concert, church, barbecue, etc. Baby, I’m not coming. As a chronically ill person with an invisible disability—all autoimmune related—I already fight for a decent quality of life every damn day.
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these theaters are not revolutionary. these theaters aren’t even remotely interested in anything revolutionary. just marketing & vibes.
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I am keenly aware of how many stories do not end with the finding of an alive, safe loved one. May we never gloss over a missing persons post. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is another Black woman whom I do not know, who is missing. May she, too, be found & safe.
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Some university/conservatory should hire me to teach a class (series) called “The Politics of Radical Black Women Playwrights 1847 - Present”
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Very honored to receive this award. I have long admired PEN America’s work & now they’re honoring me for mine! 🥹😍❤️
BREAKING: Vinod Kumar Shukla and Erika Dickerson-Despenza Will Receive Career Achievement Honors at the 2023 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City on March 2.
#PENLitAwards
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Michael Er*c Dys*n is a well-known sexual predator on college campuses and Blk theater practitioners/producers keep inviting him to participate in Blk theater events.
Folks are still inviting sexual predators to host theater events. Y’all are so unserious about loving Blk women and girls.
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Interrogate your lack of imagination which compels you to tell me “how it is” and “how it’s always been” instead of being a co-creator of the future, imagining what can be.
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As a playwright who called The Lark home & a new board member with many hopes, I am saddened by the organization’s loss AND excited by the possibility of creating something more just, resourced, sustainable & global majority-centered. Things end. What will you help build next?
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Robert O’Hara’s Public Theater production of A Raisin in the Sun is perfect. Perfect. I say that as a Blk queer woman from Chicago who has hated most Raisin productions. This cast? Whew.
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You learn a lot about a person & how they regard you when they are angry, navigating fear, & during an ending.
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I turned “Oskar’s table” at The Public’s Library into a Blk women’s literary altar.
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There was a typo. Please be gracious with me. It’s been a long ass week. I was moving across the country & trying to navigate moving challenges as the VG things popped off. I’m exhausted.
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Every shadow/land playbill includes this insert—even at performances that lack mask *mandates.* We also provide masks at every single performance. So, if you don’t wear one you’re making a very telling choice.
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Thank you to
@NH_Project
,
@VictoryGardens
(under Chay’s leadership) &
@arsnova
who have all submitted (or asked to) cullud wattah in pervious years. Thank you &
@JPhillipsMoore
/
@PublicTheaterNY
for believing it was still possible to be honored in this way. ❤️
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The challenge & delight in my being a playwright is found, in part, in the gap between when I write a work & when an audience sees it. By the time of production, I've already moved on & matured politically, stylistically & personally. The audience must always catch up.
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Saidiya Hartman was at the opening of CULLUD WATTAH & honestly I am still recovering. Whew. An honor.
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intracultural tourism, if you will. And then there’s her dissemblance…
anyway, the album is solid. but we’ve got a revolution to start. & that is always more important to me.
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Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding. Evil is silly. It may be horrible, but at the same time it's not a compelling idea. It's predictable.
-- Toni Morrison
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Also, if we’re talking theater revivals, I would love for folks to read & produce more of Ntozake Shange’s works…besides for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf…
@PublicTheaterNY
should really be producing her adaptation of Mother Courage. 🙃😊
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“Punishment is easy, accountability is hard.” — Miriame Kaba
How have we spent our lives (especially this year) punishing ourselves & others? In addition to the role of unresolved trauma, how does punishing ourselves & others become a way to negate real accountability?
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Wow this is really cool! I love very few things more than teaching & [great] teachers! ❤️
At Cullud Wattah a few months ago, I was blown away by the "theatre etiquette" in
@blkplaywright
's program. So I made a poster and put it up in my classroom.
Hope future students see my class as a theatrical space.
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CULLUD WATTAH Character portraits.
The mighty matriarch, Big Ma
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I will never let y’all forget that Broadway did not dim the lights for Shange when she passed, didn’t do it on the first anniversary of her passing & has not apologized for the slight. It’s still abolish broadway over here.
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For me—a writer in the last quarter of the 20th century, not much more than 100 years after Emancipation, a writer who is Black and a woman—the exercise is different. My job becomes how to rip that veil drawn over “proceedings too terrible to relate.”
— Toni Morrison
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It is important to name the erasure of the problem of capitalism & patriarchy which operate in tandem with white supremacy within the American Theatre. An honest evaluation of our circumstance requires a more complex analysis than many care to acknowledge since it isn’t “neat.”
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Every time I see broadway talmbout how they gone dim the lights for somebody who has passed I think about how the lights weren’t dimmed when my literary mother, Ntozake Shange, passed. I will never ever forgive or forget that.
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Ntozake Shange was RIGHT THERE. Zora Neale Hurston was RIGHT THERE. Pearl Cleage was RIGHT THERE. Early Suzan-Lori Parks was RIGHT THERE. The big sis Katori Hall was RIGHT THERE. Georgia Douglas Johnson was RIGHT THERE. Alice Dunbar Nelson was RIGHT THERE. & that’s just theater.
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& somebody on here is like “CULLUD WATTAH reviewed well. It got all 4 & 5 star reviews. She should be grateful.” I AM NOT NOR WILL I EVER BE A GRATEFUL BITCH. The work of radical Blk artists deserves care-filled, rigorous criticism.
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“It’s not a perfect play/production but she’s a great writer” is NOT rigorous. It’s actually silly. What is a perfect play? Who said perfection is even a goal? Perfect to whom? What if I’m intentionally being imperfect? What are you even saying? Hush.
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When you engage my work, see Blk first. Blk visual artists, Blk feminist/womanist theorists, novelists, dancers & poets. ALWAYS POETS. Blk artistic movements. 19th & 20th century Blk theater practitioners. Otherwise, you’ve missed it. MISSED IT.
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Patriarchy destroys so many beautiful things, especially intimacy. It’s so exhausting trying to live & love outside of the thing that has always tried to kill you & finds new ways to stunt your life daily.
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I declined the meeting. Be careful how you treat folks, especially people in service industries. Life comes at you fast. She never considers that the daughter of a service worker coulda been her next show runner but she was a rude goofy so that’s dead.
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It’s about to be Blk history month & all the Blk theater folks will post about Blk theaters. The irony is that many Blk theater folks are not in the legacy of those theaters. Let’s look at Free Southern Theater.
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& another thing, because I have time this morning: if you see CULLUD WATTAH & the first thing you say to me is “This play needs to be on Broadway!” You may have missed the entire point & intention. That is not the compliment you think it is, beloved.
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If Dr. Angela Yvonne Davis can say she does not have all the answers & that she is still learning, surely we can all be diligent in our life-long political education & humble enough to admit that our best practices are best practices but not the only practices.
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Tonight I received a Lilly Award AND a DGF award. I’m in my bag until further notice.
.
.
.
To be clear: it’s not even fully about the cultural capital. Do y’all know how few disorderly Blk Queer women playwrights get funding to write what we are already writing?!
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“What do you think an artist’s job is?”
To keep our sensibilities alive, so we aren’t numb by our struggles to survive. That’s what I think our job is right now.
— Ntozake Shange
“But she’s just an artist. Y’all doin too much askin her to do & be all of those [political, integrous] things.”
Artists are the vanguard of revolution.
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Have the pulitzer prize-winning playwrights in NYC been supporting the students of Columbia?
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Happy birthday to the prolific bell hooks. In her honor today is a good day to:
• order & read one of her 20+ books
• leave an unhealthy and/or unfulfilling relationship
• give the astute, unpopular critique
• stand in your queerness
• prioritize your pleasure
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Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I’m careful about what I give voice to. —Toni Cade Bambara
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more famous Blk playwrights rallied for the Tony Awards to go on despite the writers & actors strike than they are advocating for a permanent ceasefire & free palestine.
and then there’s jackson just being a fucking demon. I just… y’all are so damn embarrassing my God.
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I am not a writer who writes every day, outside of journaling, tending to the self archive. But I do read every day. I think critically every day. I dream every day. I touch grass every day. I hug trees every day. I live. Every. Day.
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I am so full. So very full. The Ntozake Shange Social Justice Residency is here & y’all showed up. A time was had til midnight! I think mama Zake is proud. ❤️
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My mom works as a flight attendant. Before the pandemic a “famous” Blk woman actress my mother admired boarded a flight she was working. My mom greeted the actress warmly but she was EXTREMELY rude to my mom. Now the head of her production company has asked to meet with me. 🙃
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CULLUD WATTAH won numerous awards before it even premiered. But what I value the absolute most is hearing poor & working class Blk women of all generations say “I felt seen tonight. You wrote us so lovingly. Thank you.” Whew. That keeps me writing Us in spirit & in truth.
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Thank you to everyone who supported my work, said my name in career-changing rooms, knew I was magic before I was sure of my own conjure power & encouraged me when taking Black suffering & radical leftist politics seriously wasn’t (& still isn’t) popular in American Theater.
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I just came here to say my forever love is Dana Elaine Owens known to mere mortals as Queen Latifah. The r a n g e of her career is incomparable & her hair is always LAID.
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When I first pitched the Shange residency to The Public, I was asked if I wanted to make it a master residency for myself. I chose a rotating two-year term because I don’t believe in scarcity. There will be something else for me after my inaugural term. I don’t have to hoard.
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Every time I get discouraged about the state of our world & relations, each new personal, national or global apocalypse I hear Octavia Butler say, “adapt or die.” Then I lean into the discomfort of stretching, resting, dreaming & adapting “in these times”, which is all the time.
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I’m rejoicing over Griner’s release. AND there are many, many Blk, dark, queer Blk girls & women who are not celebrities in captivity. May we not forget about them. May we center them. May we not have celebrity-centered politics. May we actually care about everyday Blk girls.
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1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself
2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.
3. Your real life is with us, your family.
4. You are not the work you do;’you are the person you are.
— Toni Morrison
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Y’all know Rashida Tlaib is a (new honorary) member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. right? D9 where’s the mobilization spearheaded by Zetas? These orgs be so proud of the lil [insert sorority/fraternity name] Day at the Nation’s Capital and yet…🫠
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& the most egregious & obvious missed opportunity is the conversation I’m having with Lorraine Hansberry’s A RAISIN IN THE SUN but centering the freedom dreams of Blk WOMEN as opposed to a Walter Lee. I fancy REESEE as Beneatha’s great-great granddaughter. IT WAS ALL RIGHT THERE.
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Lorraine Hansberry would not be fucking with 90% (& i’m being generous) of Blk playwrights who claim to be in her lineage. Paul Robeson, Ruby & Ossie Davis would not be fucking with these Black actors. Like, have folks studied their communist & radical leftist political work?!
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I’m deeply hurt by seeing so many organizers, artists, friends & Sorors outside at mass events maskless. I’ve been thinking about James Baldwin’s quote “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” Y’all don’t love Blk disabled, immunocompromised people. Y’all don’t.
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All the lil Blk capitalists with no capital get so upset every time I say Broadway must be abolished. What kind of artist would you be if your dreams weren’t to be white? To fit within the structures of whiteness & capitalism? My, how that would free some folks as makers!
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My favorite part of CULLUD WATTAH previews was greeting as many Blk audience members as I could pre-show & during intermission. I’d ask about their experience & I never said I was the playwright. Watching some folks realize it afterward & seeing them smile was everything. 🥰
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A hefty amount of my time as a queer Blk radical feminist/womanist woman writer is telling/teaching people HOW to read me. It’s exhausting. & it’s not new. So many of Lorraine Hansberry’s journals, articles & laments are about being misread by liberals—often intentionally.
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While every member of the cast & crew will be paid out through the end of their contracts, theater doesn’t pay well to begin with & we’re risking a lot—seen & unseen—for revolution. We do it because Our future depends on our willingness to say no what what is & create what can be
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And if y’all must find a white man to throw in the conversation—since it seems folks don’t know how to do dramatic criticism without white men—Bertolt Brecht WAS RIGHT THERE. MOTHER COURAGE WAS RIGHT THERE PEOPLE!
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“I would prefer Black radical unity. There are some Black people I don’t want to unify with.” — Angela Davis.
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The way I’m contemporizing & queering Lena Younger? It was RIGHT THERE. I was in the prayer closet with auntie Lorraine & people paid to be critical thinkers & dramatic critics missed it all. Give me the lil check & I’ll write about my show my damn self.
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