2023 Princess Grace Award-Winner Marissa Joyce Stamps' BEING UP IN HERE… Premieres January 2024

Staged January 5-13 at Brooklyn's Brick Theater, Being Up in Here and All the Other Businesses that Don't Concern You OR When You See a Buncha Black People Running, What Do You Do? will be directed by Marissa Joyce Stamps. The play garnered Stamps the 2023 Princess Grace Playwriting Award/New Dramatists Fellowship.

Being Up in Here... follows best friends Aaliyah and Eli, who get magical running sneakers from an old and mysterious Haitian woman, and run On Their Way across the universe to finally meet their neighborhood matriarch, Mama She. But, what happens when they make the unfamiliar familiar and run off course?

By invoking running, the play centers utopian possibilities for Black individuals, especially women and femmes, in channeling rest and recuperation while tackling the guilt associated with embracing those principles. Additionally, Being Up in Here... explores the mental war of deciding whether to stay close to the familiar or to risk venturing into the unfamiliar, and examines the nuances of prioritizing one over the other in one's search for home, belonging, and self-actualization.

The play features Alexis Dobynes, Aja Downing, Marie Flore Stamps, Mariyea, Danté Charles Crichlow, and Chloe Mutebi.

Being Up in Here... is being co-produced by Stamps, Thalia Sablon, Ava Elizabeth Novak, and Nola Latty. It will include stage management by Abi Berven-Stotz, scenic design by lucas a degirolamo, costume design by DeShon Elem, lighting design by Andre Segar, sound design and composition by Lamb, and lead carpentry by Thomas Wagner.

The production has also partnered with We Run Brownsville, a Black-women led and community-based nonprofit that works-primarily through runs and community organizing-to improve Black and Brown women's holistic health and wellbeing. Co-founders Sheila Gordon and Dionne Grayman will be featured in a post-show panel on Black women and femme's rest and restoration within a grind and hustle culture on Friday, January 12.

Visit TheExponentialFestival.org for more information about Being Up in Here... Visit WeRunBrownsville.org for more information about We Run Brownsville.

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