Leticia: Yes, Jordan and I had seen the production and the co-production at Crow's Theatre and Obsidian Theatre, which is the Black theatre here in Toronto. Let me tell you, Jordan has been pestering me. I remember the first time you've seen this, a production of this play, and you were like, "Have you heard of this play?" I was like, "No," and then you were like, “Well, you need to and you need to read it.” I was like, “I don't know if I want to read it. I might want to experience it.” But it just so happens that I, at that point, didn't have availability to go see it where it had actually quite a few productions because Jordan has seen it three times, including this production.
Jordan: It's my third. I think before this, our episode on A Strange Loop will have come out. It's funny that now both of those productions were my third time seeing both of them.
Leticia: Right. I think it's funny that the play about basketball and so many other things, you've seen three times, I've seen once. But I will say in, Jordan's infinite wisdom, knows me because let me tell you, this play, FLEX by Candrice Jones, feels like a love letter specifically to me. It feels like two of my selves uniting into one, and that's how I felt, experienced this production. I think sports on stage is very, very difficult to complete, but there's just a relationship that I have with the material.
I thank the playwright for writing such a phenomenal play that really engages the nuances of basketball in a relationship and what basketball brings to people's lives. I had a ball seeing this production and experiencing this play. Oh yes, pun intended. “I know it's not, it's not”—on my KeKe Palmer. But I do really appreciate this play for so many reasons. I remember coming out of the theatre when I'd seen it, and I was just so floored.
Jordan: I have the text messages to prove it.
Leticia: If you know me, you know when I'm really into something, I really dive off the deep end and need to get more information about the thing. This is how I felt about it. I'm so excited to talk about FLEX. This is probably, I would even say since What to Send Up When It Goes Down, I haven't had the same feeling in the theatre.
Jordan: If you've been with us since the beginning, you know how much we are obsessed with What to Send Up When It Goes Down. Okay. So, this is high praise.
Leticia: It's very high praise. So, yeah, FLEX, amazing. So, the first image that Candrice Jones identifies as the inception or inspiration for the play was a team of pregnant girls playing basketball. She recalls a conversation with one of her teammates at the University of Arkansas at Monticello where she played basketball. Previously, they had been high school rivals on rival teams. She talks about how her teammate was like, “Man, you all really could have done some things if people on your team wouldn't have gotten pregnant.” She was like, “Oh, interesting.” Well, go ahead, Jordan.
Jordan: I was going to say, reminds me, “the only reason you're here—"
Leticia: “Because Tanya Randall got pregnant and decided not to come.” Yes. That's Love & Basketball.
Jordan: Exactly.
Leticia: That is Love & Basketball. Yes, my favorite movie.
Jordan: Your favorite movie.
Leticia: So yes, I love the play about basketball. She said she was reminded about this particular conversation when she began writing FLEX in 2016. For those who they haven't had the pleasure of reading or watching a production of FLEX, I would say it's the cousin of something like The Wolves, but with more specificity to Black life, Black girlhood, the nuances of what it means to be growing up Black in the South in very particular ways that I really appreciated. You could tell that this is a woman who could hoop, who hooped, the lingo, the approach to the game, the way that it influenced her characters.
Jordan: Yeah. Can we back up a little bit? One of the reasons why I told Leticia, “you need to see this play” is Leticia was a baller back in the day, or I feel like once you're a baller, you're always a baller. But Leticia played basketball back in the day. Actually, one of my first encounters with Leticia is back when we were at UMD. We're in the grad office and I was talking to her. She mentioned something about playing basketball or something, and I was like, “Oh, you play basketball?” This woman reaches in the bottom drawer of her desk, pulls out the drawer, and there's a basketball in the drawer. I called her “Spalding” after that. Especially after the line in Love & Basketball, “Damn, I didn't know Spalding made dresses” or whatever it is. Shout out to Gabrielle Union.
Hearing also about your experience of playing basketball and everything over the years and then seeing this play, and like you said, it's like your worlds coming together, theatre and basketball and Blackness, everything all wrapped up in one because we watched a production of The Wolves and you really loved it because of that girlhood element and the sports element and all of those different things. But then this feels like it just took it a step further and just really spoke about your experience. So, yeah, I don't know if you wanted to add anything just about your background as a Black girl playing basketball for a while in your life and then coming to this play with that, also that embodied experience too.
Leticia: This feels like a very personal episode because I don't know if we've had a play that spoke to either one of us, one of our lives in such, I think, resonant ways. Even though this play's in Arkansas and I'm from California, even though there is actually a character who moves from California to Arkansas. Yeah, I guess to give this background is the lore goes that a young Leticia in our family, it was like you have to play sports. So, I have three other siblings. I'm the second oldest. My sister ran track. My brother played football. I played basketball and my little sister didn't play nothing because she's the baby, but that's neither here nor there. But the lore was that my parents tried to make me run track or they did make me run track, not they tried. I had to run track and I hated it. I can't stand it.
If you meet any of my siblings, they'll tell you about my long jump career. They'll talk about the time I wore church socks and literally leaned. If you know track and field, they tell you to lean over the line to stop the clock earlier. I hit a fifty-yard lean. There is a photo with my hands just behind my back, the criminal lean. It's the lore of me. Track and field was not my sport. So, I went to my parents and I was like, “This thing don't cut it. I can't do this. I don't like running. It's not fun to me, it's not enjoyable.” They were like, “That's fine, but you have to play some sport.” I was like, “I want to play basketball.”
Then from there, I remember going to the local recreation center after school when I was in elementary school with my brother every single day to play basketball after we did our homework. We would do our homework, get on our bikes, go to the rec, hoop for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. I ended up playing travel ball for a bit. I was pretty good. I was a combo guard. Then when I got to college, I played a point guard primarily.
Jordan: Like the protagonist.
Leticia: Yes, like the protagonist.
Jordan: Which we’ll get to in a second. And Monica in Love & Basketball.
Leticia: Yeah, Monica in Love & Basketball. Quite honestly, to cut the story, the longer legacy, short is that basketball, similar to this play, was a way for me to escape the circumstances of my family. I grew up very poor, and I always wanted something better and something different for my life. I knew my family couldn't afford college, so I was like, “I have to make this basketball thing work to even get an opportunity to change my class position.” So like Starra, the central protagonist in this play, I was relentless with doing whatever it took to get there. So, I identify so deeply with the way that basketball becomes both her reclamation. It becomes her life. It becomes the very thing that allows her to dream and otherwise.
I think those things for me really spoke to me on a very deeply personal level and why I continue to love and watch basketball now and I miss it deeply. I miss the camaraderie of the team. There's a scene where they're all at the teammate's house hanging out. I miss those moments. I miss five players on a court working together, passing the ball, teamwork, the choreography of a play that I've never thought about is choreography until I got into grad school, the improvisation of the game, the way that what's happening on the court reflects so deeply what happens outside of the court. So, yeah, I'm ranting a bit.
Jordan: You have to be so in sync. You have to be so in sync. You have to know each other, who's going to pass, who's not going to pass.
Leticia: Yeah, which makes Starra's character—
Jordan: To anticipate each other's movement.
Leticia: Which makes Starra's character so complex is that she's the point guard of the team. So, if you've never played basketball before, the point guard runs the show. The point guard directs everyone. The point guard keeps the team together. The point guard has to make sure everyone else is in the right position. They make the thing go. They're supposed to be the leader of the team. So, when Sidney comes to town and Starra, who's been seen as the best player all her life, that position is challenged. She basically changes what a point guard is supposed to be, right? Sidney's open, but she doesn't pass. She shoots the ball. She doesn't make the right play, which the point guard is supposed to, right?
The point guard is supposed to say you have eyes in the back of your head, and that becomes a conflict with her throughout the entire play that creates this division with her and Sidney. How about you? What did you experience as someone who... Your brother played basketball. Your brother played basketball, right? You watched basketball games with me because I used to watch it when we were in grad school together. I'm just curious about your experience of this particular play and its central focus on basketball.
Jordan: Well, I feel like knowing you and having you be such a big part of my life for all these years, it made the play really special for me because that's how I knew it was going to resonate. I was like, “This is so you.” All the things I've also picked up from our conversations around basketball, I've become more of a basketball fan in the years since knowing you and learning from you and then the way that the WNBA has just exploded in the last few years has been part of that journey for me too. But I grew up around basketball. Like you said, my brother played, but also my parents were huge... I don't want to say are, huge sports fans.
The Lakers, yes, no one can see it except me, but Leticia made the LA sign with her hands. But the Lakers were the team that my... I am not from California, neither are my parents. They lived there in the late eighties and early nineties, but they're not from California. I don't know, but they just have such a deep connection to those players and that team. My brother's also still a huge Lakers fan. So, anyways, and then we are one of the fortunate teams in the United States to have a women's basketball team, Atlanta Dream, which I believe was established—
Leticia: Which you went to a game last year.
Jordan: So I went to the home opener and it was so fun. It was amazing. I'm looking forward to going back because now we have Brittney Griner on the Atlanta Dream now. So, I'm excited to see her play live. But anyways, I think for me, that's my experience with basketball. So, watching this play, it made the heart of it so interesting for me to see just this love of the game. Starra being this protagonist that will do anything because she loves it so much. How many plays do we get to see where a young Black girl, not a woman, not a mother. We see this unrelenting passion for someone who's a mom, for example or whatever, but just a girl who's like, “I love basketball so much that I'm willing to do anything, including some crazy stuff—”
Leticia: Including some crazy stuff, emphasis.
Jordan: Right? To do it, it actually reminds me of our episode with Whitney White, where Whitney was talking about her connection to Lady Macbeth as this person who will do anything for power, for love. Always too much, always too ambitious, always too... I think Starra is a similar way. Like I said, this is my third time seeing this play. I saw... I want to say it was either the world premiere or it was a rolling world premiere where it was a co-pro between two theatres and one of them was Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta. Shout out if you've watched or listened to our episode with Addae Moon, who is the associate artistic director there. I saw FLEX there with my mom actually, and we loved that production so much.
Then I saw it again a couple of summers ago at the Lincoln Center in New York City, which I also loved that production, and then seeing this one in a whole different context in Toronto was just such a treat for me. It just spoke to... I don't want to use the word universal, but it just spoke to that Lorraine Hansberry quote where she's like, “You can find the universal in this specific.” I mean this play for being a recent play has had a good amount of productions across the United States and now Toronto. I think it's because she speaks so specifically to that experience of Black girlhood in the South, being ambitious and being athletic, and all of that wrapped into just this beautifully poetic and funny and nuanced representation of so many different types of girls.
There are some threads I wish were pulled on a little bit more, but I don't feel like I walked away being like, “Oh, this character, I don't know this person or I don't know that person.” I just feel like she did so much in such a short amount of time. I just love this play so much. I hope that people keep doing it everywhere. Even me not being a basketball player, but being an ambitious Black girl, that was me. It wasn't basketball, but it was just like I always had dreams of doing something more than what I was prescribed to do. I think Starra spoke to that experience of just being a Black girl that would do anything for what she loves. Also, I'm a twin and Starra's a twin too.
Leticia: With the boy twin, like you as well.
Jordan: With the boy twin. Shout out to Douglas.
Leticia: Yeah, I agree with everything you said, and I think Candrice Jones as a playwright put her whole foot in this.
Jordan: Also, I've gotten a chance to meet Candrice and she's just as spunky and fierce and passionate as these characters come off on the page. So, Candrice, if you're listening to this, we love FLEX.
Leticia: Stuck a whole foot in it. I want to see this play again and again. That's honestly how I feel about it. I'm still thinking about it. I cannot wait to get my hands on a script. I know I can get it from The Dramatist [Play Service], but they want sixteen dollars to ship to Canada and that's a lot. That's more than the play itself cost, but that's neither here nor there. I can't wait to read it. I know that there was a talk back of a production in Toronto where the actors talked to the audience about the play. One of the things that I found curious, just looking on the Toronto Reddit, Theatre Reddit, where people talk about the shows that they're seeing, is that they said that one of the actors asked them, “What happens if shots are missed?”
Because there's key points in the play where the shot, if it's made or missed, determines the dialogue. So, if they miss something, then you're like, “Well, do they say the same dialogue?” Actually, in the play itself, there's different dialogue for if a shot is made or missed in these key moments, which I think is super interesting. It really leans into the improvisational nature of theatre, but also the choose your own adventure that relies on the actor's ability and let's be clear.
Jordan: And basketball.
Leticia: And basketball.
Jordan: Sometimes you miss.
Leticia: I know. And the audience, when they would miss, I would shout “break.”
Jordan: Did you?
Leticia: Unrelenting, unrelenting, but I just think that's a really cool convention. Like you said, very much basketball. So, the way that basketball translates onto the stage is not trying to create a division between the two, but actually ingrain it. I think this production did a great job of really merging it and thinking about the play not as a play about basketball, but a play that is integrated with the game of basketball in so many aspects. I thought there was some really smart choices with the choreography of it. FLEX looks like a real play.
Jordan: Yeah. So, that's what I've always wanted to ask you about is I was like, because there's certain terms obviously that I don't always know. I mean, I've heard over and over again that I don't always know what they mean. It seems like “flex” is a play that they've developed inside this play, not something that's like—
Leticia: No, no, no, I'm sure there are certain plays that travel, no matter where you're going, one of those plays that most people who probably play basketball know is motion. But there's different types of motions. The whole thing about a play is that it's choreographed. We practice and practice the play, but there's all these moments of improvisation that can actually happen within the play, right? The play is there, but we don't stick to only the play if the goal is to score. But “flex” is absolutely a name that someone would name for a play. To give you some insight, we would come up with the names. So, in college, we had a play called “New York,” which is the screen at the top of the key the point guard, me, where I would get screened. The idea was that I would score. We had plays like—
Jordan: Why New York? Why'd you call it New York?
Leticia: That's what the coach wanted to call it. But in high school, there was this running joke that I had a big derriere. I do not. It was a running joke. So, I would tell people to call me “cakes.” I'd be like, “Yes, I got cakes.” The coach asked me, we had this new play, he's like, “What do you want to call it?” I was like, “I want to call it ‘cakes’.” So we had a play called Cakes. So, it varies, right? It varies. But what I could say as someone who played and embodied the very thing that they were doing, the play looked like a play that would actually exist if I went to go watch somebody play like a high school girls team. The movement, the screens, the way they screened, where they put the arm across the chest, the way the movement was organized, and these are not basketball players.
They don't necessarily have the embodied knowledge and training of basketball players, but there was a basketball coach who consulted on this production. So, they did actually have to go to the gym and believable enough for me, believable enough. Again, the nuances, I think I told you this when we were talking about offline about it, but the comfortableness of the ball. How you carry and dribble the ball, not as someone who is seasoned but passable enough where it felt like these are these actresses' lives, the characters that they're playing, that yes, these are people that have a dirt road outside of their house and they spend hours and hours on it.
Enough so where I believed it, not so much where they were dribbling like they never picked up a ball, which I really, really appreciated because that's the difficulty of staging sports on stage and that they played the sport. It wasn't the backdrop to the actual life, but it was ingrained in a way that I really appreciate it, the championship game where the way that they're played...
Jordan: And the narration of that moment too.
Leticia: I love that they switch into them talking. Yeah, I like the fact that they talk through the play. Everyone participated. It wasn't just Starra who narrates key moments for us throughout the play.
Jordan: It's different. It's different than that first scene, right? The one where she is like, “I don't know how it all went wrong,” and she misses. So, then juxtapose that with the final scene where they're all in there, so beautiful.
Leticia: So to give you all an idea of what the stage looked like, it looks like a hardwood basketball court, but it is a half-court and then it extends up to the ceiling. So, you get this mirroring action of a basketball court, and you have the audience spectators on three sides. There's shrubs because the whole idea is that Starra's father and mother helped create a basketball court, a dirt basketball court in their backyard so they could play, right? So this idea of: these are people of a certain economic class level.
They're poor. They may not have all the resources and accesses, but they can make a basketball court that then becomes the very thing that teaches her how to play and that she loves. There's this iconic scene in the play where she goes one-on-one with her rival Sidney, and Sidney tells her she's about to baptize her in the dirt. Let me tell you, just to give you more context, I feel like I'm talking a lot. Jordan, I'm sorry. I just love this play so much.
Jordan: Listen, this is your episode. I'm prepared.
Leticia: There's this one moment where they're playing. They're going one-on-one and literally I was Love & Basketball, but your audience was a regular audience.
Jordan: Can you talk about the queer element? We've talked about it offline. I'm sorry.
Leticia: Yes, we'll talk about it, but let me get this off.
Jordan: You have to mention the queerness.
Leticia:Love & Basketball has this moment where they play one on one. If you haven’t watched Love & Basketball, where have you been? Yes, double or nothing. Monica wants to play Quincy for his heart. She loses, but he says, “Double or nothing.” They live a happy life. She goes to the WNBA, end of movie.
Jordan: I'm sorry, but someone tweeted and it was like, “I don't know if Quincy really wanted Monica because why did he cross her so hard?”
Leticia: Because he was a competitor. He didn't want to lose. He wanted Tyra Banks, which was not Tyra Banks. It was Tyra Banks, but that wasn't the name of the character.
Jordan: I don't know her name.
Leticia: I've seen it on Black theatre night. Let me tell you, the director gives us announcement before and tells us like, “Hey, keep your eye on the ball. Even though we choreograph this, the ball may be in the audience. So, keep your hands ready, but also you're a part of this team and we want to hear you.” That really opened up a different avenue because one thing I know about Black people is we like to respond when we see storytelling, whether it's in the theatre, whether it's a dance, whether it's some theatre.
Jordan: You've written about this, the audience structure of theatre. I just want to tell people.
Leticia: Thank you.
Jordan: Leticia has an article about the disciplining of Black bodies in theatrical spaces and also how Black playwrights, specifically Black female playwrights, counteract those disciplining mechanisms. So, I just want to say that.
Leticia: Thanks, thanks, thanks. Shout out to me and let me tell you, the experience of that was life-changing. Black theatre night, a lot of people have critiqued it because of course of anything Black people are congregating, they're like, “Why are they congregating? Why can't we come?” But there's just something really special. I think it was particularly special for me to experience this in a Black audience because the very things that were happening is people were responding to the trash talk. People were responding to moments in the play where you're like, “What? I can't believe she did this.” I'm just like, “Ooh,” giggle, laugh. Ooh, they were saying things. Like they were watching TV at home, but there was a way that it was so communal that it just felt like a hug.
You could feel the actors feel the energy of the Black theatre night in the play. There's a moment where one of the characters is driving with the team and they end up hitting a vulture. One of the girls, who we'll talk about this in a moment, is pregnant and that their team has all pitched in to help her get an abortion. They're lifting up the vulture. She's like, “I want to take it off the street. We just can't leave it here.” She tries to lift it up. Let me tell you, before her and her teammate go to try to lift it up, all the Black people in the audience, which was everybody mostly, was like, "Oh." Let me tell you, when the actors broke, they could not hold it. They could not hold it in, but it was like the collective like, “Oh no, don't do that girl” was... Why are you touching that bird?
Jordan: I think about that every time I've seen this play. I'm like, “Don't touch that bird.”
Leticia: Exactly. That's why all the Black people were like, “Uh-uh,” and then we get that moment at the end of the play. Spoiler alert, I've already given you many spoilers about this play, but you go see it, go read it. It's the championship game, and the script is dictated on if they make or miss this shot. They make it. Let me tell you, it's like we were in a real basketball gym and they were really winning a championship. When people jumped out of their seat, it was like, “Yeah!” They go get the championship trophy and everything. It was a beautiful moment of Black joy that I will never forget.
I say that all to say to think about how this production thought about making everyone a part of the team. It was participatory, not in a way of like I'm going to bring you on stage and make you do something, but that inherently within the flow of the production in the script, there's these moments that requires the audience to participate as if they were at a sporting event. I think that's so ingrained in how my audience showed up, but also how I relate it to what I was seeing on stage.
Jordan: I never seen it on Black theatre night, but I feel like seeing it in Atlanta was like seeing it on Black theatre night. I felt the same way of those moments of call and response that happened in the script. I also feel like this play as much as it absolutely is about basketball and that is the play itself, it's also our link-up too in terms of it's about Black girlhood and reproductive justice, which are my areas of interest as well. So, all the conversations around abortion access and equity and bodily autonomy. What does that mean? Again, another spoiler alert, right? Starra goes nuts, and she pokes holes in Sidney's condoms that she has because one of the pacts that they have as a team is to not get pregnant or to, yeah, to not get pregnant.
Because the rule that their coach has that, again, another spoiler alert changes by the end, is that if you're pregnant, you can't play, like you're off the team. You know what I mean? I don't care how far long you are or not. If you're pregnant, you're out. So, Starra being jealous of Sidney being the new girl from California or whatever, she devises this crazy plan, which I don't even know if it's a real ‘plan’ plan or maybe it's just a moment of passion and anger that manifests into that and taking away Sidney's autonomy in those choices too. So, then there's that element, and then there's their teammate who is pregnant, who wants to get an abortion. Then we also find out all of her personal history around how her agency was taken away from her with her family history.
So, there's just so much here around, this can't just be a fun little play about girls who love basketball, because there are Black girls living in really untenable circumstances who are trying to figure out a way out. Then we have the storyline with overly religious teammate who is Starra's cousin, Cherise, who is Starra's cousin. Cherise got a secret though.
Leticia: A secret that her teammates know, which is I think also important.
Jordan: I always feel like that was ambiguous.
Leticia: No, her teammates know. Starra mentions immediately at the beginning that like, “Well, what about with you and Shayna?” What's her name? Donna. What about you and Donna, what you and Donna are doing? She mentions that very early in passing, right? So it's very—
Jordan: You're right, you're right.
Leticia: ... passe, right? There's also the moment where they're at Sidney's house and Sidney's like, “We're going to put these condoms on these vegetables.” I forget how it comes up, but Sidney's like to Cherise, “You're going to have sex with a guy?” She's like, “Yeah.” Then she's like, “Oh, I just thought.” There's a knowing that the team knows. It doesn't seem like there's judgment for that. It's just a matter of fact of...
Jordan: It feels like Cherise, you know what I mean? She's judging herself.
Leticia: She's judging herself because I think the conflict with her queerness and her desire, and I would even say love for this teammate, is challenged by her religion that I also think is very genuine, that she also loves, that she gets something from, her father's a pastor. It becomes very important because the team gets baptized at one point. Just a note on the production, the moment where the baptismal ring comes up on the basketball court, I thought, was a beautiful, beautiful moment. It was lighted beautifully, but also, it made me think of the ring shout. Then that same circle and that same baptism is reflected when Sidney and Starra are playing one-on-one, and it's like this flash of that same circle.
Jordan: You're getting baptized in the dirt.
Leticia: Yes. So, I loved those choices in there, but yeah, Cherise is a very complicated figure to me. Like you mentioned earlier, I wish that thread was pulled a little bit more because I feel like, not that I wanted resolution.
Jordan: Specifically also from Donna's perspective.
Leticia: Not that I wanted resolution, but I wanted to understand that conflict a bit more. It seems like a lot of the conversations between Cherise and Donna are very the unspoken. Though we know something's there and they have these moments of intimacy, but it seems like they won't talk about the complexities of their relationship.
Jordan: We've talked about this, but loved the performer who played Donna.
Leticia: Amazing timing, comedic timing. Donna seems to be like the one like, “Hey, y’all. Hey, how y’all doing? Let's not fight.” That's very much the energy, but the actress's timing of these moments where there's these high tension moments in the play and that her character is supposed to break it, I thought, was brilliant. I think it's funny that you said in one of the productions, Donna's the center, but in this production, Donna was the shortest person on the team.
Jordan: But that felt gay too because tiny little masculine of center, tiny studs, that's a thing. So, I thought it was funny. But yeah, the first production I saw at Theatrical Outfit, the actor who played Donna was very tall.
Leticia: I also loved about this production, and I would love to hear your thoughts about this because I feel like this is another connection point for you, is the use of nineties music within it. So, there's a moment. The opening intermission one was amazing because it's written. I love music in a play. I love good music in a play where they're in the car driving to get the abortion. This particular production played the Aaliyah song, “boy, I've been watching you like a hawk in the sky,” and the team is singing it. It just brought me back to all the road trips that I had with my teammates to go to tournaments and stuff and us collectively singing. But also in this, when I seen it on Black theatre night, the audience sang with them.
I mean, I don't mean whisper. I mean “I've been watching you like a hawk.” That also felt like we were also all in the car, and I guess we were in the car, right? Because we're there to see it. East Coast. But the music, the very nineties music of this, because this play takes place on the advent of the WNBA becoming a league, which was in 1997. So, 1996 was when they announced that it would become a league, but 1997 was when the first game was played. That was off of the back of the Olympics, where of course, if you ain’t know, studied your history, but the US women's national team always been breaking the breaks off of these girls on the national stage. Now it's a little more contentious. But back in the day, back in the day, the Lisa Leslie, the Cynthia Cooper, killing the girls, killing the girls.
The way that basketball translates onto the stage is not trying to create a division between the two, but actually ingrain it. I think this production did a great job of really merging it and thinking about the play not as a play about basketball, but a play that is integrated with the game of basketball.
Jordan: What's the one who just became the manager?
Leticia: The manager? What do you mean?
Jordan: Sue Bird?
Leticia: Oh yeah, Sue Bird. Was Sue Bird on that team? I don't think Sue Bird was on that team yet.
Jordan: Was she?
Leticia: She just recently retired. But if you know basketball and you know basketball players, then you would recognize them.
Jordan: Anyway, but also that made me also think about, you can feel free to if you don't want to talk about this, but just also your decision to not pursue a professional career in basketball. When watching this play, for me, it made me think about the precarity of women's sports, and especially in the nineties, right? Yes. There was the excitement of like, “Oh, my God, there's a women's league,” but so much of the play is also about unrealized potential and unrealized dreams also around that, like Starra's mother getting pregnant and not being able to pursue that. The coach, it seems like too, not being able to follow that dream because where were you going to go as a woman—
Leticia: Overseas.
Jordan: ... who played sports in that spot? Yeah, overseas, but that can only last for so long too. You're away from your family and your friends and everything else. Then even so with the establishment of the WNBA, we know what those salaries look like. Now, they've gotten better because of the popularity has increased, but it's not like in the NBA. You know what I mean? You can sit on the bench in the NBA and still make a decent living, but you could be the best player in the WNBA, and it's still not enough to actually make a living or what you would think that a public figure like a basketball player is making.
Leticia: No.
Jordan: So it made me think about also the fact that for so many of them, it's short-lived. It is a short-lived thing, and how many women have had to give up their dreams of pursuing a professional career, especially before the WNBA was even a thing, because there was no place for them really to go. Or if they wanted to, they would have to give up so much. So, yeah, that's also what I think about too.
Leticia: Yeah, I think that that is so astute observation, and I would say that precarity has not went away even in the WNBA now and the way that it has grown specifically in the past couple of years has been amazing and great. But right now, the WNBA is about to start its official seasons and pre-season. There's cuts. There's only I think twelve teams or thirteen teams. Let me check that. Hold on.
Jordan: That's also sad. That's true.
Leticia: Yes, I was correct. There's only thirteen teams with the Golden-
Jordan: Is that just with new teams being added?
Leticia: No. So, that's the Golden State Valkyries. So, I was saying it's thirteen teams. It was previously twelve. This season, the Golden State Valkyries will play for the first time, and then next year the Toronto Tempo. Then what's the other team? The Portland team, I don't know their name yet.
Jordan: Oh, I didn't even know they added a team.
Leticia: Yeah, will start playing next year. So, within that precarity, the roster's only twelve players, and of course people don't retire. So, people are playing year after year after year. So, there's cuts every year. This time is literally Death Valley of WNBA cuts where people who get drafted in this draft class... I mean high draft picks, first round, the sixth pick, first round, the thirteenth pick, whatever it is in the first round will not make a WNBA team, and they'll be cut because there's just not enough spaces. So, that precarity is very real, and a lot of women's basketball players are forced to go overseas. I guess for me, I just always knew that it wasn't sustainable, and I was really interested in what's sustainable, what's going to be able to help me build a life. I didn't have any interests of going to play overseas.
So, for me, I had to make a decision. Part of that was like, okay, basketball got me here, a.k.a. college. What can I do to maximize me being here and what other avenues and interests can I explore? So when I graduate, I have other paths just beyond basketball. I still love the game deeply, and all that jazz. But for me, that precarity was very real. I think today, women's basketball players feel that deeply in a way that men's basketball players often don't have to because the NBA has a G League, which is the amateur league, which allows them to create a pathway to the NBA if they're good enough in the same way women's basketball does not.
Jordan: How many NBA teams?
Leticia: Thirty-two.
Jordan: You know what I mean? Thirty-two versus thirteen, going to be fifteen in a few years, but that's still less than half of the spots. So, I don't want to hear anyone talk about women's basketball. It's highly competitive. You're only competing for so many spots every year. There's just not the space. There's just not the space. So, that means that these women are playing at such an incredibly high level to make themselves stand out in a way. No shade to NBA players because I know that it's not easy to get in the NBA either, but come on now, in comparison to the opportunity alone for NBA versus WNBA. So, you have to know that everyone you're seeing on the court, you know what I mean?
The Caitlin Clarks, the Paige Bueckers, the Angel Reeses, Brittney Griner, all of these women who are playing at this professional level had to do a lot to get there. So, that's also the dramaturgical shadowing that I felt, especially with Starra and Sidney who are so good. Starra is hungry for it as well too. Even though they had the WNBA league, I don't even know how many teams they started with. So, it had to be less than there is now even. So, even with that, it's like Sidney's going to go to this school and everything and there still may not be a spot for her when she's done, even though she was recruited out of high school and all this stuff, right? So yeah, that's what I was also considering too.
Leticia: Yeah, no, absolutely. Some of the original WNBA teams are not teams now. So, if you watch WNBA, when it first came, there was this hooper named Cynthia Cooper, guard, tearing the girls up. Tina Thompson was on her team. So, the Houston Comets, she played on a team on the Houston Comets. The Houston Comets are not currently a WNBA team, but they were a dynasty during the advent of the WNBA. You think about that legacy and how sad that team doesn't even exist anymore. Dawn Staley, who coaches for South Carolina currently, played for the Charlotte Sting. That's also not a team anymore. I was lucky enough that my mother worked at the time, when I was maybe eight, at UCSD— where I actually ended up getting my degree—in the kitchen at the dining hall.
She had some connection with someone, and the women's national team came to play at UCSD. She got us tickets and then also got me to meet some of the players. So, I met Lisa Leslie and I met Dawn Staley when I was eight years old. There's this picture of me next to Lisa Leslie who's like six-four, and I was a tiny thing coming up to her knees. That's literally where the top of my head was.
I think about those memories and how basketball has played such a key point in my life and the precarity of the league, but also the love for the league. I'm happy that more people are acknowledging the athleticism and the skill of women's basketball players. I think this play contributes to our understanding of basketball, of women's sports and athletics as something important and that we should pay attention to.
Jordan: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, to refer back to the play, this train got a little bit off track, but we just love this play so much. I think even if you don't necessarily consider yourself a basketball fan like me, I feel like I'm like a casual consumer of basketball, specifically women's basketball. This play really spoke to so many aspects of Black girlhood, reproductive justice, the collaboration, southern identity, spirituality. There's just so much to pull from this play, and I really love that it's getting produced so much everywhere. I hope it continues to have such an amazing life. Candrice Jones, again, if you're listening to this episode, we are so excited for what you put out next.
Leticia: 100 percent, 100 percent. I'm absolutely floored with this play and I know it was more stream of consciousness for us today as we recorded, but I think it just illustrates the richness of FLEX and this particular production that we watched that, again, like I said, I love the production, I love the choices, I love the play. The performances are great.
Jordan: Oh, one more other thing was the lighting. The lighting was so good. It matched with the beat and it gave me Space Jam vibes.
Leticia: Yeah, the neon lights, it was actually also a reveal because you don't necessarily see that. You just see the outline of the lane and everything. Then next thing you know, you have these transition moments where there are all these neon lights that light up in fun colors, but also very effective. It was just very, very effective.
Jordan: So yeah, we love this play. Just check out FLEX whenever it comes near you. We love this production, and I just hope to see more from Candrice Jones in theatre and also just continuing to see the beautiful life of this play.
Leticia: More women sports on stage. I feel like there's a lot of... I wouldn't say a lot because I think staging sports is difficult on stage, but there's much more plays about men athletes and men's sports in the theatre than there is women's sports. So, more of people leaning into that legacy, hoping to see more of that. Hopefully, we can see more of this play and more life of it. I will see another production, 100 percent. Yeah, I'm going to try.
I'm going to see this one again. Sadly, when you all listen to this, it would have been closed, but FLEX is having a life. So, go see it or even read it.
Jordan: Continue to support Obsidian Theatre. Obsidian Theatre and Crow's Theatre because they also co-pro the production of A Strange Loop that we saw too. So, they're all doing some amazing work in Toronto. I am so fortunate to live so close to Toronto and be able to experience all the incredible theatre that you all have in that city. So, yeah, support your local theatre.
Leticia: Support your local theatre. But before we get out of here, we are going to turn to our reading list. What do we have for plays, Jordan?
Jordan: Yeah, so we are going to offer you Toni Stone by Lydia Diamond, and then two other plays that we feel that are also related to the work that is being done by FLEX is [The Elaborate Entrance of] Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz and a play that we talked about a little bit in this podcast, which is The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe. I'm also going to add Dance Nation by Clare Barron. I know, “is dance sports?” Blah, blah, blah, but I think that it also brings up a lot of the similar themes.
Leticia: Great, great. For articles and books, we have an anthology called Sports Plays, which is edited by Broderick Chow and Eero Laine. Just to mention, because I know if I don't mention it, Jordan's going to interrupt me and mention it, is that I do have an article in there about Serena Williams and a Terrence McNally play called Deuce, which is about women's tennis. We also have an article by Lev Kreft called “Sport as a Drama,” which is not necessarily within the realm of the fields of theatre and performance studies, but the framing of sport as drama is something that I think connects our fields across something like psychology and sociology.
Then lastly, we may have mentioned this before for other episodes, but an oldie but goodie is Harvey Young's Embodying Black Experience. Specifically, he talks about the boxers, Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis, I believe. So, make sure that you check out those articles and books. Jordan?
Jordan: I also want to add one more play/film, One Night in Miami.
Leticia: Ooh, that's good. Yes, One Night in Miami.
Jordan: One Night in Miami. I think Muhammad Ali is one of them. This is a play that was written by Kemp Powers that was then adapted into a screenplay, which was then directed by Regina King. So, yeah, I also want to shout out One Night in Miami.
Leticia: Great. That is wonderful. Jordan, pleasure.
Jordan: Longer episode today.
Leticia: Longer episode today. It was a pleasure to talk to you about this play and more sports and plays that maybe we'll see and talk about on the podcast.
Jordan: For Black women's experiences playing sports for theatre, my playwrights, especially ones who have played sports—
Leticia: Period.
Jordan: ... get on that.
Leticia: All right, Thanks for listening. This has been another episode of Daughters of Lorraine. We're your hosts, Leticia Ridley.
Jordan: And Jordan Ealey. We'll see you on our next episode. You definitely won't want to miss it. In the meantime, if you're looking to connect with us, please follow us on Instagram at daughtersoflorrainepod. You can also email us at [email protected] for further contact.
Leticia: Our theme music is composed by Enza Bomba, the Daughters of Lorraine podcast is supported by HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. It's available on iTunes, Spotify, and howlround.com. If you're looking for the podcast on iTunes or Spotify, you'll want to search and subscribe to Daughters of Lorraine podcast.
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