Mirroring Our World with Kelundra Smith

Leticia Ridley: Welcome to Daughters of Lorraine, a podcast from your friendly neighborhood, Black feminists exploring the legacies, present, and futures of Black theatre. We are your hosts, Leticia Ridley and…

Jordan Ealey: Jordan Ealey. This is a podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. And on it we discuss Black theatre history;, conduct interviews with local, national, and international Black theatre artists, scholars and practitioners; and discuss plays by Black playwrights that have our minds buzzing.

Leticia: Kelundra Smith is an arts and culture journalist, playwright, theatre critic, and editor. She's the director of publishing at Theatre Communications Group where she guides content and brand strategy for TCG Books, American Theatre Magazine, and Arts Search. She also works with tourism clients on content development, contributes articles to regional and national magazines, and writes plays about people of color living in the South.

Jordan: Smith holds a master's degree from Goldring Arts Journalism School at Syracuse University and Bachelor's degrees from the University of Georgia in journalism and theatre. She's a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and the National Association of Black Journalists. Smith has also been a fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, National Critics Institute, as well as a resident artist at Crosstown Arts Center in Memphis. We had a chance to interview Kelundra about her multifaceted career and learn more about the cultural landscape of theatre criticism and its meanings for Black theatre.

Hello everyone. It is my distinct honor and pleasure to welcome Kelundra Smith. Kelundra, hello. Welcome to Daughters of Lorraine.

Kelundra Smith: Hello. Thank you all so much for having me. I feel like this is one of those theatre podcasts where once you get a Daughters of Lorraine interview, you know you're doing something right. So I feel honored.

Jordan: Before we were getting on to record, I was singing Kelundra's praises. I've been such a huge fan of hers for years. I'd followed her journalism, especially locally, both ATL girls and then I get to also follow your playwriting career! But we're going to talk about all of that coming up soon. So let me ask you a question just to warm us up a little bit. Could you tell us about your journey in theatre? You wear so many hats. You are a multi-hyphenate artist, creator, writer, editor. So could you talk a little bit about how you came to theatre? Why is it the medium that speaks to you and yeah, how have you gotten to where you are now?

Kelundra: I wear too many hats. I always say I got into theatre where teachers put the kids who talk too much in class, so that's really how it started is that they were like, "Get her to shut up by putting her on a stage." And so it really started out as things you would do in elementary school like there was President's Day and Black History Month and all these little programs you would do. Talent shows and stuff like that at school. And then that morphed into doing high school theatre as a way to make friends and have an outlet and something to do because I was a kid who was bussed across town for school, so nobody was coming to get me as soon as school let out, so I needed something to do and so theatre was that. And then when I got into college, I actually had no intention of doing theatre. I was all in on journalism. And then I auditioned for a production of Real Women Have Curves, and I got cast in it. And they were like, "You need to declare a major," and I was like, "Fine." And so it's been on ever since. I have not always made my living in the theatre industry, which I think is healthy. But I definitely have floated in it for over a decade now.

Leticia: Was there an inciting play or musical or something that really made you really lean into theatre and be like, "Wow. This is something I'm super interested in, not just as something participating as an actor per se, but as a theatre critic. I want to think about what these things that are happening on stage are actually offering us"?

Kelundra: When I was a senior in college ... Well, the summer before my senior year of college, I studied abroad in London and we took a performance critique class as a part of that study abroad program. And up until that point, I was a double major [in] journalism and theatre. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it. I just knew that I wanted to figure out a way to combine the two, but I didn't know how. And then taking that performance critique class, a light bulb went off. And so I remember I was sitting in the audience at the National Theatre and we were watching a play called London Assurance, which is a comedy of manners. I love manners plays. And so that was the moment the light bulb went off. And then when I came back home, I just Googled theatre journalism, arts journalism. At the time, I didn't know whether it was a thing or not. And so I Googled master's degree programs in arts journalism and found a handful of programs. Wound up going to Syracuse University and getting my master's degree in arts journalism there. And that was the start of it. Because it allowed me to combine my knowledge of production and performance with the psychoanalytical brain that I have.

Leticia: Yeah. I love what you said about combining it and the utility of it and thinking about how do we think about theatre beyond the practitioners? And I love you practitioners. I'm a practitioner myself. But I think sometimes the theatre critic a bit gets looked down upon. But we're, I think, essential to the narrative of a show archiving the history of productions and thinking through the importance of this thing that we call theatre, I often think about my graduate school career. And I was in this class called the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Dr. Esther Kim Lee knew that I had no interest in the eighteenth and nineteenth century theatre history. But one of the things that I learned in that class is that we would have to do production history reports. And she had us look at the reviews of the productions.

And let me tell you, the theatre critics back in the day were eating the girls up. Y'all don't even know. Y'all mad at theatre critics now, back in the day, they would call you everything but a child of God! They'd be sticking their foot on your neck[s]. And that balance I find as someone who I, also operates in this space of theatre criticism now, a delicate balance. How do you balance how we think and do theatre with both your practitioner side and your critic side without overly critiquing? And I don't know if overly critiquing it is a correct term here, but I'm just trying to think through some of the more stickiness of what we, I think all on this Zoom call do.

Kelundra: Well, I think there's a couple of things there. I think one is that the myth of objectivity has really messed people up. Because it's the idea that's rooted in white supremacy that assumes that the normal or default perspective is this patriarchal white male perspective. And so his perspective is the objective perspective. And then everybody else's perspective is questioned within that. And so I've long rejected that idea. I don't put me aside when I'm experiencing arts. I bring my full self to it. What I think is a more fair expectation is professionalism, meaning that I'm going to come in having done my research, I'm going to come in with wide breadth and depth of knowledge of the art form. I'm going to come in having seen more shows than most audience members ever will. Because back when I was reviewing a lot, I would see minimum fifty shows a year, and most people aren't doing that. So like, what you going to tell me? But anyway, it's like, okay, girl.

I think there's that piece of it. Then I also think that it's about everybody has a different lens through which they're approaching critique. So some people when they sit down to see a show, they're really, really focused on the text. Some people are really focused on performance. Some people are focused on design. Some people are focused on social cultural context. Some people are focused on a combination of those things. Some people are focused on the company itself or the city in which the thing is taking place in and how it speaks to the people in that place. There's all these different lenses. It's much like literary criticism. You've got feminist lenses, you've got romanticism, whatever. And so to me, theatre criticism is no different. And the way that I tend to approach it is I'm looking at a show through the lens of “why this play now?” And that tends to be my entry point. And then I go from there. I don't review as much as I used to by any means. I haven't reviewed in forever because I've been busy writing plays. And part of how I got into that was I just was sitting in the audience and not seeing enough of what I wanted to be seeing, and I realized nobody else was going to write it.

Jordan: Toni Morrison, she wrote the book that she wanted to read. So I'm hearing that with you and definitely want to hear more about that. But if I can continue riding the theatre criticism wave for a second, because you are the first theatre critic that we’ve had on the podcast. We've had scholars, other professors, and we ourselves... It's so funny. Now we've been so graciously and beautifully welcomed into the theatre criticism circle because of the Daughters ...

Leticia: We could use some more free tickets though. So theatres, if you're listening, please invite us to come see your shows. Thank you.

Jordan: But especially when we lived in DC, we were, members of the press. Theatres reached out to us. We'd get press kits and all of the announcements and stuff. But now that we've dispersed, it's been a little bit more decentralized in that. So we have been—so shout out to DC theatre. You guys always showed us love. I know we jumped ahead a little bit, but if you could describe what a theatre critic is, what they do. You've talked about the different lenses there, which I think is so helpful and so interesting to think about. I've never thought about that. Like Leticia, I read reviews a lot, especially you guys are so important for archives, you're so important for archival research. I'm writing this book right now, and I don't know what I would do if I didn't have the work of journalists from the past who have cataloged these shows. Even if I don't always agree with their assessments, the fact that there is that archival work that's being done. But I digress. So could you talk about the theatre criticism, what a theatre critic is, and why theatre criticism is essential to how we think about and do theatre and the landscape broadly for theatre criticism?

Kelundra: Sure. So from my perspective, the theatre critic is a bridge between the artists and the audience. So that's how I approach the work. If you ask a different theatre critic, they'll give you a different definition. But I believe that the theatre critic ... It's so funny because I teach theatre criticism workshops, and so in my head, I have this bulletin list of the things I teach. And so for me, the primary function of the critic to your point, is to archive the work for the history books. Theatre is inherently ephemeral and after the show is struck, it is gone. And so theatre criticism is the evidence that we have left. And a lot of people don't realize when we look even in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, those gourds, those faces, the scenes that are painted on them… that and the theatre criticism. That's what we have.

And so I think that that's a big piece of it that is not to be underestimated. I also think that it's important to be able to, like I said before, put the work in a sociocultural context, elevate the taste of the audience, which I think is a more controversial perspective. But I do think it is a part of what the theatre critic does, is that we make taste. We point people's attention in a particular direction, which is a very powerful position to hold. And we have the ability to amplify, whether that's our intention or not. But really for me being the bridge, the conversation starter, not bender, is really where I find the joy in it.

As far as what the theatre criticism landscape looks like now, arts criticism more broadly and theatre criticism specifically has really, really changed, especially in the last, I would say twenty years, but really, really in the last decade. When I started reviewing almost fifteen years ago, it was a very different world than it is now. You would as a young critic, a lot of the time be reviewing shows what we call “on spec,” meaning you would go out and you review something without an assignment, and then you would turn it in hoping that something dropped out of the paper or the magazine where you hoped to put your review, and then you would hope they would pick it up and if they picked it up, then they would pay you. Or if you've had an assignment, you were making anywhere from zero to two hundred fifty dollars, which those rates really haven't changed much even at the newspapers of record. And you would go out, review the show, turn that review around within twenty-four to forty-eight hours and it would need to be ready to be in the paper on Sunday.

It was just a different ... And I think because technology moves so fast, we forget that the digital world we live in is still relatively new. Fifteen years ago, you were still turning a review around to get it in the Sunday paper. But then also what we saw was probably around twenty years ago, this burgeoning of online criticism outlets all across the country. We didn't necessarily see them in major markets like Chicago, LA, and New York, but we did see it more in places where arts criticism and arts coverage was contracting because the 2008 recession. And the recession is a really pivotal turning point, not only in theatre criticism and arts criticism more broadly, but also in the broader journalism and media landscape. Because no part of journalism ever recovered from the recession. And so the contraction that we saw in places like Atlanta where the Atlanta Journal Constitution laid off their entire arts desk and never brought them back. So that's the type of thing that we saw in cities all across the country that New York is just starting to experience now.

And so that's why it was such a big deal when the Washington Post hired Naveen Kumar, because when ... Was it Peter Marks?

Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kelundra: When Peter retired, everybody was like, "Oh my God. Are they going to replace him with anybody or is this done so for that position?" Like what happened at the Chicago sometimes after Hedy Weiss. It was just like, okay, well there's nobody there anymore. So I say all of that to say that we are in an era of both continuing contraction in traditional media outlets for theatre criticism, but also an era of new possibilities in digital platforms for theatre criticism. Because in addition to the written word existing in substacks and on Medium and things like that, you also have people who are reviewing theatre on IG and on TheatreTok and on YouTube and building their own audiences with their own micro community newsletters that they produce themselves that have various types of media therein. So I think that there's been a decentralization of the means of publication, which are naturally making their way into theatre criticism. And then you have this other distant cousin of that with influencer culture, which in the Broadway sphere is interesting and its own hustle. And in the regional sphere is just now starting to really take flight.

Jordan: Ooh, that's such an interesting thing to think about. The shifting how we engage with shows and how they get marketed and also how they get critiqued I guess if you could call, what influencers do any form of critique or review. I hate to ask what I sometimes feel is a very boring, expected cliche question about representation. But this being a Black theatre podcast and us thinking about the history and present of Black theatre, we've often seen Black theatre artists talk about how their shows get just misunderstood within theatre criticism by white critics who may come to their shows and don't really know... I would even venture to say marginalized theatre artists in general. But we've seen specifically, from our vantage point, Black artists. And this isn't just a new phenomenon. Even though I was thinking about it, Leticia, I was like, we've had so many... When we pull from black theatre, we're pulling from op-eds, playwrights who've written for newspapers. Douglas Turner Ward and Alice Childress, and in my research, Micki Grant. All of these folks who have contributed their thoughts around representation in newspapers specifically. So I think that's really interesting.

But to get back on the point is, in your career have you, especially thinking about it through the lens of Black theatre, how have you seen the importance of Black theatre and Black theatre critics and critics of color in these spaces? And yeah. How significant is that work? Or do you feel like the burden of representation sometimes also in those spaces of like, okay, I'm a Black critic going to see a Black show, this is the definitive review or something that may happen there?

Kelundra: So there's multiple layers to that answer. So first I will say, do I feel a burden of representation? No. I think that maybe earlier in my career... I never censored what I had to say by any means, which made some people mad. But I definitely was aware that for certain playwrights, for certain shows, especially when they were on stage at predominantly white institutions, there were people who would read my work who maybe weren't of the culture of the community who would read it to decide whether a thing was worthy. And when I did realize that, I was like, "Oh, I'm still going to tell the truth of what I see,” but just having that awareness. So it didn't change what I wrote, but it may have changed word choice.

As far as the other pieces of that, which is the representation in theatre criticism, before I dig into that, I think there's a couple of things that when I hear artists say that that come to mind, which is A: how easy is it to find you, find your show and get in touch with you? Because I look at theatre websites all the time where there's not an email address or phone number to be found of how to get in touch with somebody. So you can't be mad when you don't get coverage, when nobody knows how to reach you in order to be able to cover you. Because as journalists who are overburdened and overtaxed, I think often the theatre artists, especially folks who work within the nonprofit theatre industrial complex, seem to be under the impression that they're the only ones at the trenches. This is not the case.

Let me tell you about the expected output of a journalist at a daily paper. The expected output of a journalist at a magazine even. And what a freelance journalist is having to do, the volume of work they have to do in order to cobble it together to make a living. I remember when I freelanced, which I only did full-time freelancing for short spats of time throughout my career because the stress of it. But I would be working on no less than six stories at a time, some mix of features, reviews, and contract work. I used to do a lot of tourism publication, development, and stuff like that for tourism bureaus. And so if I'm doing these ten things and you reach out to me the week you open and you're like, "Can you come review my show?" Well, first of all, the place I'm writing for had these assignments determined at least four to eight weeks ago. So no, because I can't land it anywhere. So I think people have to understand how news cycles work. So with all the things that have changed about the way media works, we have not gotten to the instantaneous space.

If you want your stuff in a magazine, you need to be thinking three to four months out. If you want your stuff in a paper, you really need to be thinking a month out. Gone are the days of being able to pitch something on a Monday and have it in the paper on a Sunday. That's not how this works anymore. The people who could make that happen are gone. So there's that piece of it and I just have to say that then there's what publications, outlets, platforms are we giving credence to over others? Is it that no one's reviewing your work, or is it that the daily mainstream outlet that you want or the television station or whatever is not giving your work the amplification? Because in most major cities, there's ethnic media outlets that have always covered arts and culture and have never stopped even in the midst of contraction. And so is the problem that it's not in the New York Times or is the problem that you're not getting coverage at all?

There are so many platforms in different cities outside of the dailies that cover the arts, whether you're talking about Artburst in Miami, CultureMap in Dallas, Onstage NTX in Dallas, ArtsATL [and] Burnaway in Atlanta. DC Theater Arts I think is still around in DC. There's all these different places in major cities. The Reader in Chicago, Windy City Times in Chicago. So it's like whose attention do you want? Are you trying to connect to where community is or do you just want your thing written about in this paper or record for the grant funds? Nothing wrong with either one, but I would rather have a good well-written review in a smaller outlet than a “man…” out of touch review in a larger one. That's just my perspective.

Then getting to diversity amongst critics. That's a lot. So getting to diversity amongst critics. There are critics of color out there. There aren't a lot, but they do exist. They can just be hard to find because they usually cover other beats and other mediums in order to again, make a living. So one of the things that has been really central to my career is I got involved with the American Theatre Critics Association probably about eight years ago now. And it was right around the time they were starting what was then called the DEI committee, is now the BEID Committee. And the whole purpose of that committee within the American Theatre Critics Association was to be able to connect critics from marginalized groups across the country. And so one of the first projects of that committee was literally creating a diverse critics list. This still exists, and it has critics who identify as women, transgender, nonbinary, and or POC all across the country. It's divided by region. And then Nicole Sarah Torre and Jose Solís, years ago created a diverse critics list as well. So these two lists are out there. They're on Google and available for anybody to find.

And so there are a lot more critics out there than people know, and you just got to work harder to find them in the same way that people have to work harder to find artists of color. We hear this conversation all the time. How come there's no sound designer who's an Asian woman? It's like, well, if you would talk to Asian women on a regular basis, then maybe you would know one to ask when you need an Asian woman sound designer. It's the same concept. And then there's also Critical Minded, which is an initiative of Allied Media projects. And they have just released a report this year about the lived experiences of theatre critics of color.

It is called the Theater Landscape Project. If you look up Critical Minded Theatre Landscape Project, you can find it. It is a long report, but it has great summary pages that are easy to read. And it's divided into multiple sections. It gives you information about what the theatre criticism landscape looks like today. It has anecdotes from interviews with theatre critics of color, and then it also has recommendations for what a fertile theatre criticism ecology looks like for the future. So I would encourage people who find themselves frustrated about the state of theatre criticism to also read that Critical Minded report to get a better understanding of what it is out here.

Full disclosure, I was an interviewer for that project. It is important to have a multitude of perspectives writing about art because there's no substitute for cultural inside understanding. I'm going as a black woman from the South, The Color Purple musical is just going to land differently with me than it is from somebody who's also not from Georgia, like Alice Walker, if you've never been to Eatonton like I have. I know what those wildflowers look like that she's writing about. So I'm bringing that lived experience to the writing that somebody who hasn't lived that just won't. And so that's why we need a multitude of perspectives. So yes, it is important, but yes, people are out there.

Leticia: One of the things that I just want to highlight, Jordan, before you ask this next question, is one of the things that I was really shocked with, but also very appreciative of when we first started the podcast was our first episode was on Fairview. Often when me and Jordan go speak to classes about podcasting and theatre, they ask at the inception of it and I always say that our first episode was terrible, not content wise, but audio wise, because we were learning as we go on the fly, quite frankly. But when we released that episode, even with the terrible audio, Jackie Sibblies Drury at that time was on Twitter and had seen it and affirmed us in the project of reviewing a production of Fairview in DC. And that was really monumental, I think, for Jordan and I, to kind of see the utility of this new thing that we are trying out amongst our studies of getting a PhD in theatre. And we've also had folks like James Ijames also respond to our episode on Fat Ham at the Public. I say that also to say that it's so useful when also playwrights themselves affirm what you are doing and the necessary project of your work of theatre criticism, of the archiving and thinking through the work.

Jordan: Yeah, we've always gotten really great support from practitioners, Black practitioners, Black theatre artists. So everything you're saying, it's like they're out there and you'll find your people, you'll find the voices that you need to hear. And before you move on to your creative practice, I have been a lifelong, it feels like, reader of American Theatre. I begged my mom for a subscription when I was younger. I'm like, if anyone's going to—

Leticia: Nerd.

Jordan: I am a nerd. I've been a nerd for a long time. I used to read that all the time. There was a dance magazine, I really want to say it was called Dance Magazine, where I used to read it all the time when I was a kid. I've been such a nerd for it. So anyways, and now you are even on staff at American Theatre for a little bit. Could you talk about your role as a Director of Production, I want to say, is your title there and what that is and what you do there?

I often say that theatre mirrors our world and also transcends it.

Kelundra: So I joined American Theatre in 2023 as Managing Editor after it had been on three-year print hiatus during the pandemic. And then last year I became Director of Publications for TCG more broadly. So in that role, I'm guiding strategy around content and revenue for American Theatre, TCG books, and Art Search. So it is a nice chunky corner of our communications within across the theatre ecology. But hearing people say exactly what you said. We have so many people say, "Oh, I started reading American Theatre when I was in middle school or in high school, or they had it in my library, and I've been reading it ever since." And I remember that. I remember picking up American Theatre in seventh, eighth grade and being like, what is this? Same thing with Dramatists Magazine when they used to print. I remember Dance Magazine. That that's the importance of journalism is that it's supposed to give you a window out and a window in. A window out of where you are and into where somebody else is.

I remember Linda Winer, who was the theatre critic for Newsday for many years, said, "Theatre is about getting under the skin of different types of people." And I've always really, really loved that analogy because I think that's exactly what it is. I often say that theatre mirrors our world and also transcends it. And so it's really a treat to be able to see how the sausage is made, so to speak.

Leticia: Yeah. I love that. So many gems, so many gems. Jordan and I are just like... I'm just like, "Ooh. Ah." Let's transition a bit. You spoke a bit earlier about your playwriting, specifically the impetus for really leaning into that side of you was that you weren't seeing the things that you wanted to see on stage. Can you talk a bit about how you define or understand yourself as a playwright?

Kelundra: Yeah. No. I love these chunky questions on the Daughters of Lorraine. These PhDs. I was like, these PhDs, I'm going to miss them. So I got into playwriting because... I will say playwriting got into me. It was like late-2017, I was working a job I hated, and I was driving home on a stormy day, and I had just finished doing a piece about the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in DC. So I had just come back from DC. I had written a piece about the opening of that museum. And while I was there, I had seen this panel in the historical galleries about the Atlanta washerwomen strike of 1881. And I had never heard of the Atlanta washerwomen strike. I didn't know what it was. So like a journalist, I started digging, calling people at the history center. Tell me what you know about this thing. Wrote my story, turned it in, thought I had moved on.

Was driving home one day from this job I hated. It was really, truly like a scene from a movie. It was one of those humid Georgia days where the air is so thick, it feels like you could scoop it up. The sky was blue gray, it was about to storm, which means I was going to be in traffic for a long time. And I started hearing these voices in my head. And the only way that I can describe them was to say they were the voices of my ancestors, even though they were women I didn't know. And those voices and that scene that I saw so clearly in my head became what is now act one scene to of my play, The Wash. So that is really one of those divine inspiration things that as an artist, you don't realize how rare they are until you realize how rare they are. Because so much of being an artist is about discipline and consistency, and you have to will the muses. There's strategy. There's technique. You don't often get the deus ex machina that you wish. And so that was the start of it. But I had gotten to a place probably after I wrote half of the first act of The Wash, which is a comedic drama inspired by the Atlanta washerwomen strike, currently on a National New Play Network Rolling World premiere. Shameless plug.

Jordan: Okay. No. This what you do. That's what you do. If you can't brag about yourself or Daughters of Lorraine, where can you brag about yourself?

Kelundra: Listen, and we have had successful runs in Atlanta and in St. Louis. And if you are in New York City, we will see you at Women's Project Theatre, produced by Woodie King's New Federal Theatre, directed by Awoye Timpo. That will be June 6th through the 29th. And if you are in Chi-Town, we will see you, produced by Prop THTR and Perceptions Theatre October 31st to November 30th. Okay, I'm done. And if you're in Boston, look out for 2026 dates.

Same thing with The Wash, with Atlanta washerwomen strike. Let's talk about reconstruction. Let's talk about black achievements during the Reconstruction era in the late nineteenth century, which then led me into, it's a trilogy now. So as we speak, I'm currently in Memphis, Tennessee at Crosstown Arts Center, and they have a residency program, highly recommend, where for three months, you can come and work on whatever you want.

And there's no expectation of a presentation or anything. You do an artist talk and that's it. But there's no expected outcome. And they house you and you're in this great building, in this great neighborhood in Memphis. And you can work on whatever you want. So I'm working on The Vote, which is the second play in the Reconstruction Trilogy, inspired by the election of the “Original 33,” which was thirty-three black men elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 1868. And then doing research on The Knot, which is the first play, chronologically last play written in the trilogy, which is a romance about a couple that is deciding, do we want to stay together on the other side of freedom?

Jordan: Well, you can't leave it ... I'm just kidding. Can you leave us with that? What? No. I cannot wait to see all... Oh, I have so many things that you said dropping so many gems, as Leticia said earlier. And also I wanted to say too is that the exploration of history is so important. And also what you just said, I was getting flashbacks because ... And I don't want to misquote her, but when we had Pearl Cleage on the podcast, I believe she also shared a similar thing of being in a car, sitting in Atlanta traffic and hearing the ancestors speak to her. It was so uncanny of that. And I'm thinking of Ntozake Shange, I'm thinking about the rainbow. There was just something with Black women in skies and ancestors that is a thread that is very slowly coming together. I was just basking in that moment of like, oh, there's a little connection there as well. So coming up on time before we get into our recommendations, we're in a political crisis, we're in social crisis.

Leticia: We can no longer say, “all I have to do is stay Black and die.” We literally cannot do that anymore.

Jordan: No. We have to live. We actually have to live. So anyways, in this moment of crisis, Black theatre, what do we make of this? I was thinking about this, even us coming back for our next season. What's that meme? “What the hell are we going to do now?” That's what I've been thinking about these past few days. So Kelundra, what does that look like? Help us. No one can see us, but we're all crying of laughter right now.

Kelundra: Oh, God. What we gone do? Stay black and die. Okay. You know what? No, we're going to read. So I have Imani Perry's new book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People on my desk right now. And so I'm reading that. I'm reading, I Can't Wait to Call You My Wife by Rita Roberts, which is a book of African-American love letters from the Civil War era. So we're reading that. We just finished reading Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell. If you've not read it, oh my God. It is a wild book about what would happen if all the white people in the United States got possessed and drowned themselves and it was nothing but people of color left. And it's a wild-ass book, let me say. And I'm circling the block on All About Love by bell hooks because love is what we're going to do in this time. That's all we can do.

And we've got to really be able to answer the question for ourselves. How do we love? How do we show love to people? How do we show love to people who are hard to love? How do we show love to people who we don't know? How do we demonstrate to strangers that we love them? So we're going to answer a lot of questions about love, and that's how we are going to make it through. And for Black theatre, we're going to keep creating, and we're not going to fall into traps of scarcity mindset and resource hoarding and not acting like we don't know that shared resource and community solidarity is how we got this far. And so we are going to have to do it to continue on.

Jordan: If y'all could see the praise break that we've been... Me and Leticia have been like... Yes. I think I've been falling backwards in my chair every time Kelundra speaks.

Leticia: I know. A word truly and also I think an important message to digest, especially when everything just seems so chaotic, which it is. It doesn't seem—it is chaotic. And I am in a very different position from a lot of my kinfolk who are still in the United States of America because I'm in Canada, and there is at least what I'm seeing, a lot of Black American plays being produced over here. So they just closed Fat Ham at one of the theatres here, and [A] Strange Loop is coming in April. So it's really interesting to see how Black American theatre travels. But before we close, I have one unfair question that I love to ask people. So I'm going to ask you that. What is your favorite play?

Kelundra: Oh, nonsense. Bye. This interview is over.

Leticia: What do you mean? I told you it was unfair.

Kelundra: I'm not going to answer that question.

Leticia: Fair enough.

Kelundra: I will instead answer ... This is such a journalist thing to do. I'm going to instead answer what are plays that I constantly return to, which are different from favorites. So of course, A Raisin in the Sun, SevenGuitars, Streetcar Named Desire, Real Women Have Curves, which is now a musical, and I cannot wait. Something about ... You said A Strange Loop, and let me tell you something, Michael R. Jackson, when I saw that play on Broadway, I wanted to throw something at you, but it's the play that sticks to you. I mean, musical that sticks to you. It sticks as that way too. You watch it and you're like, this is about nothing. And you're like, no, this is about everything.

Jordan: One of those sneaky plays where you're like, oh, wow. And now I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. Yeah.

Kelundra: Yeah. I like subversive work. The more subversion, the better. So yeah, those are just a few. They're certainly not all. And King Lear is another one because the basis of so many of our stories in the Western world. We're just always all watching King Lear.

Jordan: And Empire.

Kelundra: Right. Empire. What's the one? Severance. Not Severance. What was the one that everybody loved that recently ended? I didn't watch it though.

Jordan: Oh, Succession.

Kelundra: Succession. There you go.

Leticia: Jordan. When you said Empire, I thought you were talking about the project of empire, not Empire, the TV show.

Kelundra: Now, the TV show...

Leticia: Yes. I was thinking of the TV show.

Kelundra: A father splitting his record label between his three sons. That's it.

Jordan: Drip, drop, drip, drip drippity drop.

Kelundra: We're always just watching King Lear and Hamlet, which is truly the story of Cain and Abel and King David. I had a professor tell me that once. They said, "If you understand the Bible, Shakespeare and Greek mythology, you will understand the basis of every story in the Western world." And it has proven true. I would say that I would also add, if you have an understanding of Yoruba mythology, you also have a broader understanding of every story in the Western world too, because the Orishas make their way into places that you don't expect them.

Jordan: Yeah. Oh my God. I would give anything to keep talking, but we're at that hour and we want to respect your time and respect your writing time. But Kelundra, it has been an absolute delight having you on the podcast. I've gotten so much. I've learned so much in hearing all about your journey, your career, and also the places your career is going. I am so happy for you. And Daughters of Lorraine listeners, you heard Kelundra say where The Wash is going to be. So we're going to see you in July, New York. Is it June and July or just June? June in New York. We're going to see you in October in Chicago and Boston, watch out for 2026 because we're going to see you there too. And anything else coming up for you that you want to highlight, or where can the folks find you if you want to be found?

Kelundra: I am Kelundra everywhere, so K-E-L-U-N-D-R-A. I'm the only one. I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn. Kelundra.com is constantly updated with all of my things. [email protected] is my email. Give me a shout and continue to engage with American Theatre. Look up that Critical Minded report. Yeah.

Jordan: Yay. Well, thank you so much, and we'll see you all on our next episode. Bye-bye.

Leticia: This has been another episode of Daughters of Lorraine. We're your hosts, Leticia Ridley.

Jordan: Jordan Ealey. In our next episode, we'll discuss the Federal Theatre Project and its role in the growth of Black theatre. You definitely won't want to miss this. In the meantime, if you're looking to connect with us, please follow us on Instagram at Daughters of Lorraine P-O-D. You can also email us at [email protected] for further contact.

Leticia: Our theme music is composed by Inza Bamba. 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.

Jordan: If you loved this podcast, post a rating and write review on those platforms. This helps other people find us. You can also find this transcript for this episode, along with a lot of other progressive and disruptive content on howlround.com. Have an idea for an exciting podcast essay or TV event that theater community needs to hear? Visit howlround.com and submit your ideas to the commons.