Playwrights Horizons to Reopen with Aleshea Harris's WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT GOES DOWN - Casting Announced!

Playwrights Horizons will welcome audiences back into its building with What to Send Up When It Goes Down, written by Aleshea Harris (Is God Is), directed by Whitney White (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, The Amen Corner) and co-produced with the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), in association with The Movement Theatre Company. Setting out to disrupt the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness and celebrate the inherent value of Black people, Aleshea Harris's acclaimed, groundbreaking play blurs the boundaries between actors and audiences, offering a space for catharsis, discussion, reflection, and healing. Its run in the Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater, September 24 - October 17, 2021 (opening officially on September 28), is part of the institution's Redux Series, which expands audience reach for vital new plays that have premiered to limited runs elsewhere.

What to Send Up When It Goes Down's cast will include Rachel Christopher (Bad News!, King Philip's Head...) as One/Made, Ugo Chukwu (Do You Feel Anger?, Lunch Bunch) as Six/Miss, Kambi Gathesha (Romeo and Juliet, Our Lady of Kibeho) as Two, Denise Manning (Daddy, Whitney White's Three Sisters) as Eight/Song Leader, Javon Q. Minter (Julio Down By the Schoolyard, Blessed Unrest) as Seven, Adrianna Mitchell (runboyrun, Snowfall) as Three, and Beau Thom (A Christmas Carol, Every 28 Hours) as Five/Man/Driver. The creative team includes Yu-Hsuan Chen (Scenic Design), Qween Jean (Costume Design), Cha See (Lighting Design), Sinan Refik Zafar (Sound Design), Aleshea Harris (Original Songs), Genevieve Ortiz (Production Stage Manager), and Carolina Arboleda (Assistant Stage Manager).

Performances at Playwrights follow a sold-out presentation of the production this summer at the BAM Fisher, where the work-which, across three pronounced sections, reconstitutes and dissolves theatrical and social formations, crashing through the painful confines of historical and contemporary racial perception on its way to release-was met with considerable acclaim.

"This piece is first and foremost for Black people, but it's also for everybody," says Harris. "It came from a space of feeling lonely, angry, and gaslit, and needing to be with people and do something that's activated-and thinking other people might as well. Because the issue is one of great urgency, I created a participatory piece; I didn't want the audience to be allowed to passively engage with it. This is a ritual that asks people to participate because I wanted it to be a space of community, and I wanted to allow us to stop and acknowledge commonalities and differences in experiences."

Harris began conceiving What to Send Up..., which was first workshopped in 2015, compelled by feelings surrounding the murder of Trayvon Martin (and countless others across time) and the acquittal of his killer. Near the play's beginning, performers and audience members utter a dedication to a Black person who has recently been killed in an act of white supremacist/police violence-but in the script, there is a blank space for this name: presuming that with each production, another will have been lost to the government-funded-and-weaponized legacy of anti-Blackness. Wherever What to Send Up... is performed, the entry space to the theater is covered with photos of those whose lives have been cut short by such brutality. Yet against the uninterruptedness of this cycle of death and mourning-anticipated in the very format of the script-the play adamantly forges space for hope and transcendence.

Explains Harris, "I remember Angela Davis talking about the necessity of being able to imagine a future without the harmful societal ills, and I'm trying, in my imaginary, to say Black people can and will be free of this violence. But the struggle for me as an artist and as a human is how to hold that in my imaginary and to work for that as a goal, while acknowledging that all around me all the signs and symbols say that anti-Blackness is here to stay. It is so effectively ingrained in our psyches that all we have to do is continue as we are and it will be with us as long as there is a planet and we're on it."

What to Send Up When It Goes Down is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.

This production is part of the Playwrights Horizons' Redux Series, which expands audience reach for vital new plays that premiered to limited runs elsewhere. It begins a season at Playwrights Horizons that also includes the New York premiere of Sylvia Khoury's Selling Kabul (November 17 - December 23, 2021), and the world premiere productions of Dave Harris's Tambo & Bones (January 12 - February 20, 2022), Sanaz Toossi's Wish You Were Here (April 13 - May 22, 2022), and Will Arbery's Corsicana (June 2 - July 10, 2022).

Playwrights Horizons' Commitment to Health and Safety

To best protect everyone present for What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Playwrights Horizons will require all audience members to provide proof of vaccination and wear face masks, in accordance with New York City mandates and the latest CDC guidance. Additionally, the theater's ventilation system complies with the CDC's standards (MERV-13 filters), high-touch surfaces are being cleaned regularly, and paperless ticketing will be offered for all performances.

In developing its COVID-19 protocol, the organization has sought to balance the priority of public health with an acknowledgement of the vaccine hesitancy that understandably exists for some in Black communities due to historical failures in U.S. healthcare systems and ongoing personal experiences-one of the many results of structural racism. Ultimately, Playwrights opted to require vaccinations in accordance with both government guidelines and the work and approaches of many Black epidemiologists, specialists, and experts. The organization is grateful for the leaders who are guiding citizens through to the other side of this pandemic, and is committed to supporting systemic transformation toward the healing and empowerment of Black communities.

Playwrights Horizons encourages anyone interested in getting vaccinated to visit this site for guidance.

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Tickets go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, August 31 at 12pm. Performances run from September 24 to October 17. For tickets and more information, visit phnyc.org/whattosendup.

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