Photo of Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi by Louis Ortiz Froncesca
One of the few pleasures to be found within the first year of the pandemic was the amount of virtual theatre available online. Not only was it more accessible — work from theatre artists around the country and the world suddenly available to all — but it also felt like a return to theatre in its purest form. It may have lacked the in-person component, but it also was about the artists and the community, rather than a flashy ticket that cost hundreds of dollars.
This was the year multi-hyphenate playwright Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi began the short play festival Black Trans Women at the Center with the Long Wharf Theatre. Now in its fifth year, the festival continues to show exciting new work from Black trans women playwrights, this year partnering with five other theatre companies around the U.S. The 2024 festival premieres tonight at 7pm EST and will be available to stream until the 20th, followed by a new work from Edidi herself called Shape Shifter available until the 22nd.
I spoke to Edidi about the origins of the festival and about how theatre can find its way back to community.
Drew: Can you talk about how this festival started and how it has evolved over the past five years?
Dane: In 2020, a Black cis male playwright reached out to me, because he’d written this ten minute play about a Black trans woman who had various things happen to her at a bus stop. He said he wanted to center Black trans women because he felt like we’d been left out of the conversation around interpersonal violence. I’d been recommended to him because he wanted a Black trans woman to be a dramaturg and director. And he’s from New Haven so Long Wharf said they wanted to do this piece.
I met with Long Wharf and I said okay if we’re going to center the girls then we’re going to center the girls. I told them we needed to commission two Black trans women playwrights, because just having this particular piece is also erasure of Black trans women, right? In our own community, we are often having conversations that are not necessarily shown, because we live in a country that has told us not to listen to anybody who isn’t a white cis man. This country was founded on genocide and white supremacy and it’s our duty to resist those oppressive systems in the ways that we can in our lives. So I offered an expansive perspective in that meeting.
It was really really exciting because after those initial conversations Long Wharf was like absolutely. And I said I’m going to lead it because I’m the only Black trans woman in this meeting and they said absolutely. The initial idea that brought me to Long Wharf was one thing, but this is why it’s so important to have Black trans women in these conversations and Black trans women in these spaces because our expansive imagination allows for the conversation to go further than what anyone else in that meeting thought it could.
Hope (Chávez, former artistic planning director) and Joey (Reyes, planning director) and Jacob (G. Padrón, artistic director) were there and we were trying to figure out a name and Hope said I think we should call it Black Trans Women at the Center and I said that’s amazing. So we commissioned two Black trans women playwrights for year one and that was CeCe Suazo, one of my big sisters, she’s been working in theatre for decades, and working in trans advocacy within theatre for decades. And Dezi Bing who is known primarily as an actress but she’s also a playwright. She was in my piece For Black Trans Girls along with CeCe when we did it at Woolly in DC. They were the two playwrights that year and we picked people I knew because we put it together in literally a month.
Part of the vision was we were going to decenter that playwright. His play was included, but it was also about who was in it and who was the director, rather than centering this cis man. Sometimes when we have conversations about collaborators or comrades or allies, the conversation becomes about how great that person is rather than wait we should be centering and talking about the community. A lot of the time so much of what allies get celebrated for, we’re already doing.
Drew: Yup. (laughs)
Dane: (laughs) We’re already doing that work! For a decade, I’d been producing and one of my visions for For Black Trans Girls years ago was to have all these different readings in all these different theatres in all these different places. We just didn’t have the institutional backing, right? Like who is gonna pay for it? So Black Trans Women at the Center is kind of based in that vision too. It’s based in the fact that Black trans women have been doing incredible work in the theatre. Over the years when I’ve been in some of these spaces, people would ask, where are the girls? Where are the girls who act? Where are the girls who write? Where are the girls? And it’s like we’re around! There’s a whole group of us who I know!
That first year was super, super successful. It was 2020 so everyone was watching things virtually. And it was the first commissioning program that targeted Black trans women specifically. I went into that initial meeting with Long Wharf thinking if they’re really about that life, if they’re truly in community with us and truly want to be in community with Black trans women and center the girls, then they’ll say yes, and they did. So then I was like, okay what can I do now? What can I do next? So I said I want it to be annual. I met with Hope and Jacob again and said it was super successful and I want to make it annual and Jacob said, as long as I’m artistic director we’re going to have it be annual.
The next year, year two, I wanted to expand the vision, because the first year was so fast that we didn’t really have a lot of time. But sometimes when you have an idea you just have to do the idea and have it done so that it’s successful and people can see and then the next year you put all the other things into place. So I wanted to expand on the vision to include relationship building. The ins and outs of any career is about building relationships and so I said okay well if a barrier to Black trans women being in these theatrical spaces, if part of that is about access and about relationships, then let’s address that.
We decided to add a component in which the kick off of each year is an interview process, and part of that is about who is going to be part of the program that year, but it’s also about inviting people to come and talk to us. Because so many of us do other work and it helps to build relationships between artists and Long Wharf. Long Wharf is a Tony-winning, major theatrical institution in the country. And so there have been folks who were able to meet with the team who Long Wharf now talks about. And then from that we also added a workshop process and this year, year five, we actually have two folks who aren’t part of the cohort but who were also able to participate in that free workshop. That was super super exciting and then of course there’s the rehearsal process and the taping.
Drew: I love that in the centering of Black trans women perspectives, you’re also centering them as artists. Often the focus is on whether something is accurate or respectful, but that’s such a bare minimum compared to artistic expression.
Dane: And once the artists go through the program, it isn’t over. You know some of these programs, you go through them, and it’s like okay girl bye. But for us, because community is so important, some of the girls I knew before, some of the girls I just met for the first time, but there’s an ongoing relationship with artists now. Some will send me movie scripts they want feedback on or they’ll send a new play. It’s not just you do the program once and that’s it. We are in constant communication, and they’re getting even more help on their projects down the line.
There’s one artist, Mickaela Bradford, a sister of mine, who was a part of cohort two. She wrote this piece called Under False Colors about a historical Black trans woman named Frances Thompson and she’s since turned that piece into a short film and is doing screenings.
Drew: That actually brings me to my next question, because in the announcement you refer to the playwrights as multi-hyphenates and you’re very much a multi-hyphenate. Yamaya’s Daughters is actually one of the first works of fiction I ever read written by a trans person. I love it so much. So can you talk about how your playwrighting, fiction writing, choreography, producing, and community organizing inform each other?
Dane: It is one of my beliefs that the thing that art does is it helps to activate our imagination. Like trans people art has this incredible gift that allows us to imagine a world beyond this one. So at the heart of so much of my work is understanding that I bring all of myself to all of my work and so it is almost impossible to only think of my vocation as singular. As a writer, my writing is informed by my acting. I know the work that goes into acting, I know the type of words I like to say, I know the words that I like in my mouth when I’m acting. And, for example, if I’m writing a scene, I’m also thinking about any necessary costume changes. Is this going to stress an actor out to have to do a five second quick change between scene one and scene two? And if that’s needed then how else is the script supporting the actor’s ability to do the job that the actor is called there to do?
People talk about film and theatre as so different. Or even painting or other visual art as so different. But the reality is scripts are in conversation with designers so how is a script having fun with a designer and allowing for the designer to enjoy the words and enjoy what is being literally painted?
At the heart of all of it is the fact that I am all of myself. I am Black all of the time. I am Indigenous all of the time. I am Latina all of the time. I am a woman. I am trans. I’m a daughter of an immigrant. Ultimately, I want a world that is filled with liberation in which we are all liberated, meaning we are all free from oppression. So the question I ask myself is how is my work helping to teach the communities that I care deeply about how to imagine themselves beyond this world? What are the tools that my work is equipping people with?
Nina Simone was once asked why do you insist on that Blackness, that Black sound, why do you insist on it? And she said to the interviewer, because I believe black people are the most beautiful people in the world. And by hook or by crook, my work is trying to convince them of that. She also said an artist must reflect the times. They must comment on what is happening.
I may have grown up in the ghetto, but I grew up around artists who taught me the beautiful gift of imagining, of imagination, of envisioning, of intention.
Drew: A lot of old school theatre institutions have been struggling since Covid started and in that financial struggle have maybe been um…
Dane: (laughs)
Drew: Let’s say, less likely to take risks. And to them risk means doing any work that isn’t straight, cis, white, already popular, etc. etc. What is the theatre landscape like now in terms of getting work produced and produced in a way that’s financially viable for the artists? I love theatre so much, but I’ve also found that it’s a tricky place for people with any marginalized identities to build a sustainable career. And I’m curious what you think it’s like right now and what it might be in the near future.
Dane: This might be a long answer.
Drew: (laughs) Good. Go for it.
Dane: First, let me say this. I am the co-director of The Black Trans Prayer Book. We teach a lot of workshops and in one of our workshops that we teach, I say, a world free of oppression is possible but not without Black trans people. We gotta be there. My question sometimes to so many theatre institutions is, why theatre? What made them want to do theatre? I’ve heard so often from cis people, from white people, that theatre gave them a sense of belonging. But the reality is that for a long time theatre has masqueraded as a place of belonging. I’m talking about theatre as an institution, not as a community. Theatre as an institution has masqueraded as a place of belonging but has only centered a certain group of people. It has operated in an exclusionary framework while trying to convince us all of its necessity. It has operated within a capitalist white supremecist framework while trying to convince us that its salvation is necessary for our salvation. There are some people trying to change that! And some of those artistic directors, some of those artists, have come under great scrutiny, and sometimes they have not been protected.
How did we come to this? That’s the question that is often asked. The reality is we live in a country that often prioritizes product and the 1% over people, over the 99%. It tells us that in order to be treated like a human, we must earn it. We must earn our humane treatment vs. beginning with an understanding that we all deserve to be treated humanely. It says capitalism is king. It has tied so many people’s survival to harmful frameworks.
Theatre for so long as an industry has been told if you want to survive you must not resist the oppression within the system, you must become a tool of it. And there have been theatres that believed the abusive system that we call capitalism would treat them fairly if they just obeyed the rules. So there are five thousand freakin’ Music Mans and you get that one Black person in the chorus and it’s like oh lord when is Dreamgirls coming around? When is Porgy and Bess happening? Because we haven’t seen Black folks on the stage in awhile! And if you’re Asian, there’s Miss Saigon for you. Theatres were told you will survive if you operate like this. You will survive if you exclude certain people, if you minimize their voices, if you just make them a little bit smaller. And here we are in 2024 and the jig is up. The truth is revealed.
So that’s how we got here as an industry. How do we get out of it?
Theatre must, once again, remember who it is, remember what it is, remember what it’s for. Theatre could be at the forefront of so many social change movements. It could be teaching new generations of people how to be more compassionate, how to be more empathetic, how to be more humane, how to be able to imagine themselves beyond. One of the things that really inspired me to do theatre was seeing Stephanie Mills in The Wiz when I was a child. I was a kid seeing these Black people singing and dancing on a huge stage, The Lyric Opera House in Baltimore. And so theatre itself, if it wants to survive, it must return to community. It must realize the same way that it has taken years, and it really did focus years, on cultivating an older audience of a certain class, it must be equally as committed to cultivating new audiences. They have to be seen as community members, as opposed to those places, those buildings, over there where your mama can’t afford to go, or your grandpappy can’t take you even though he got to see Bubbling Brown Sugar back in the 70’s.
Theatre has to begin to recognize that it is needed and necessary. I understand why many theatres try to seem non-political. But there are things within the political arena that could make lives easier for the artists who do theatre. Universal healthcare. That would help a lot of people. Some people only do theatre because they need the healthcare — and only for pennies but they need the healthcare. Universal basic income. I think about the tax code. The tax code for artists should look a particular type of way. Because we’re always doing art. Always! This is work for me. This interview is work for me. Writing is work for me. Watching a film is work for me. Going to see a play is work for me. Even being in conversation with someone is work for me. Artists are not just living in silos. So don’t be afraid to be political. And recognize that in reality theatre cannot be for everyone. I am not interested as an artist in holding space for white supremacy. I’m not interested in that. So theatre might not be for those people. And there’s nothing wrong with that if we want a world where we can all be free and safe. I think those are some of the ways that we get out of it.
And let me say this too: There are a lot of conversations about saving the democracy. We save the democracy by saving the people. We save the theatre by saving the artists.
Black Trans Women at the Center premieres tonight at 7pm EST.
