Starting a theater company any time is tough. Starting one right before a pandemic shuts down performing arts venues around the globe is maybe the worst possible timing. But for Perceptions Theatre, going digital with their first full show provided possibilities they hadn’t imagined. And that show—Black Magic by Jerluane “Jay” Jenkins—addresses issues of pain and loss for Black women in ways that feel particularly poignant right now.
Perceptions was in its second day of auditions for a live staging of Black Magic when they realized that the shutdown was coming. But they quickly pivoted to turning the project into a digital play. Myesha-Tiara notes, “We had a friend who had the exact home that we envisioned for the main character, Sasha. It already looked exactly like I wanted it to look. And I said, ‘You know what? Since we’re going to film it anyway, let’s film it here with the budget we have to work with; let’s film it here in an actual home where we have lived-in props and we don’t have to move things in and spend extra money that we don’t have yet and make it work.’”
The Black Lives Black Words (BLBW) Plays for the People series has been providing an ongoing digital play festival for months. They kicked off the series with BLBW founder Reginald Edmund’s Ride Share in July; that piece is now slated for a digital production with Writers Theatre in 2021.
She adds, “And then the whole conversation about organ donation: something that I know for certain there is that there are so many of my family and friends who are like, ‘No. I’m not giving my organs to nobody.’ Because it’s this idea of, ‘If I am an organ donor, they are not going to work hard to save me.’” She adds, “Where that comes from is so layered in with experimentation on Black people,” and cites Henrietta Lacks as an example of a Black person whose body was used after death without the permission of her family.
Black Magic, through 11/30, available anytime via Vimeo with purchase, perceptionstheatre.org, $5-$45 suggested donation.Call for the Wailing Women, through 10/25, Thu-Sun 7 PM CDT, blacklivesblackwords.org, $10-$16.99.
