FIREFLIES at Live Arts

Part Two of Donja R. Love’s "The Love* Plays" trilogy, which explores Queer love through Black history, FIREFLIES centers on the Civil Rights Movement. A story of endurance and empowerment with language that is rich, rhythmic, and riveting.

Before the lights come up in FIREFLIES, we hear the insects humming, then see them flying in a bright red sky, and hear a repetitive boom … boom … boom. It’s the fall of 1963 and four Black children have just been killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Olivia is the speechwriter for, and force behind, her charismatic husband. As the galvanizing leader Reverend Charles Emmanuel Grace returns home, we witness their marriage at crisis point as secrets are laid bare.  

“A jaw-dropping and explosively dramatic two-hander  … Love crafts an intimate story that comes to feel cosmic in its enormity by the end.” – TheaterMania.com