"Aleshea Harris turns theater into a monument, ephemeral but real, to ongoing pain. You can't tear down a statue that never shows up outside." -Vinson Cunningham, New Yorker
This volume includes two dynamic plays from Aleshea Harris that confront the experience of being Black in America.
An explosive epic that examines the cyclical nature of violence, Is God Is follows twin sisters who undertake a dangerous journey to exact revenge upon their father at the behest of their dying mother.
What to Send Up When It Goes Down is a play-pageant-ritual response to anti-Blackness in America. It is a challenge to us all: to heal through expression, expulsion, and movement.
About the Author :
Aleshea Harris is an American playwright, spoken word artist, author, educator, actor, performer and screenwriter. Her work has been presented many places, including the Costume Shop at American Conservatory Theater, Playfest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater, VOXfest at Dartmouth, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Theatre @ Boston Court, L'cole de la Comedie de Saint-tienne, National Drama Center in France. Harris's awards include the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwrighting, the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, and The Horton Foote Prize.
Review :
'A snarly new master of high-octane carnage has risen into view… putting her own audacious stamp on that most venerable of pop genres… Is God Is sees fit to bring down the house'
'Aleshea Harris is an arsonist of a playwright. By the end of Is God Is, I found I was shaking and overwhelmed by the play's incendiary power... not since the first night of Sarah Kane's Blasted have I felt so annihilated by a play... [an] original, entertaining and sickening bloodbath of a drama'
'What to Send Up When It Comes Down is an electric, uncompromising, and powerfully moving work that will rock you to your core'
'If you're a lover of theater, looking for signs of fresh and original and in-the-moment life on the American stage, you need to see What to Send Up'
