Taking Broadway and Beyond in Stride with Whitney White

Whitney White: Going back to those Sunday mornings with my grandfather, may he rest in peace, when you go into a Black church, the pastor knows you are there, you're called to be there. So I don't know how to make work for the live stage without acknowledging the audience. I'm alive in this moment and you're alive in the moment and I have to acknowledge that in some way.

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...

Jordan Ealey: And 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: Whitney White is an Obie and Lilly Award-winning director, actor, and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. She's a Tony Award nominee, a recipient of the Susan Stroman Directing Award, an artistic associate at Roundabout, and part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Her original musical, Definition, was part of the 2019 Sundance Theatre Lab, and her four-part musical exploration of Shakespeare's women and ambition is currently under commission with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK. The first part, Macbeth in Stride, is currently running at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Whitney was a staff writer on Boots Riley's I’m a Virgo.

Jordan: She has developed work with Manhattan Theatre Club, the Public Theater, the Drama League, Ars Nova, New York Theatre Workshop, Juilliard, and more. Whitney is a believer in collaborative processes and new forms. Her musical discipline is rooted in indie soul and rock. She's passionate about Black stories, reconstructing classics, stories for and about women, and genre-defying multimedia work and film. In today's episode, we welcome Whitney back to the podcast and hear all about her new musical Macbethin Stride, her second Broadway production, and what inspires her about today's Black theatre.

Leticia: Hello everyone. Welcome back to Daughters of Lorraine. And let me tell you this, do we have a treat for you! And this is particularly special because when Jordan and I first started Daughters of Lorraine when we were very poor, very stressed out graduate students, we [saw] this show at Woolly Mammoth Theatre called What To Send Up When It Down by Aleshea Harris. And the director that we were introduced [to] with that production then became a quick supporter of the podcast and we became huge fans. We've seen her direct at Shakespeare Theatre, The Amen Corner—the first person that ever invited us to see a show. We have followed her career and have been big, big fans. So we would love again, times two, to welcome Whitney White extraordinaire back to Daughters of Lorraine. Thank you so much for coming back.

Whitney: Thank you so much for having me. I will never forget our first conversations and it's really exciting to be in dialogue with you again now.

Jordan: And it's [so] amazing, as Leticia said, to have seen your career blossom since we last had a conversation with you. And so also all the different things you've done outside of even directing that we're so excited to get into for today. And I think we're going to start off easy with our warm-up question of how did you come to theatre? What was it about this form that made you want to tell stories through it?

Whitney: Thank you for that question. I feel like church was my gateway as it is for so many of us. I went to a Black church on the south side of Chicago with my grandfather, the Apostolic House of God. And to this day, if we were to go together, you would be greeted with a fifty person choir, a full band. The sense of gathering in that space is so powerful. And so music and worship was my way in.

And then I think I was in my first little play in middle school. We did a production of Rumpelstiltskin, and I guess it did it for me. I think I was Rumpelstiltskin. What's funny is I can't remember if I was the princess or Rumpelstiltskin, but I was one of them and I loved it. So it was really through faith that I started to love music and art. And then it snowballed from there. I went to Northwestern and studied musical theatre, and then I went to Brown and studied acting and directing. Early on, I discovered that theatre was the conduit for me. That was the way I was going to understand the world around me.

Leticia: I feel like that's a very similar story to a lot of Black folks of the church being the gateway to think about theatre as a form and a medium. And I think oftentimes, that legacy and that lineage is sometimes obscured and not as connected to how we think about Black theatre and theatre broadly. The Black church was actually an important space where theatre was actually happening amidst and among community. Was there a particular play or playwright that really made you lean in and be like, "Ooh, this is juicy?"

Whitney: Yes, yes. 100 percent Lynn Nottage. I think her canon of work is so beautiful and elegant and rigorous, and I had first read Intimate Apparel and then I got to be a part of the Ruined premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. I was an understudy on that show.

Leticia: Whoa.

Jordan: Wow.

Whitney: I know. Isn't that crazy? I was an understudy to Condola Rashad at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. And maybe it was 2008 and it was when Obama was elected and we all went to Grant Park together to celebrate. I'll never forget that. But Lynn Nottage for me, really, her worlds pulled me into the theatre world, gave me a mirror, and she's still just making some of the most beautiful work today, and I've now had the great fortune of working with her and she's incredible. So I think Lynn really did it.

Leticia: Black theatre legend playwright. And I love that you described her work as rigorous because the way that she blends the artistic research side into her work and just the depth and breadth of the topics and the stories that she tells, I'm always in awe of her work. And I'm excited that she's going into the form of opera a bit more and I'm excited to see more of her work there as well.

So you mentioned earlier that the Black church was important to you, worship and music, and you are a multi-hyphenate artist as a lot of Black folks who are artists are—director, musician, writer. Can you talk a bit about your ethos and approach to your artistic work broadly? Do you have a sort of guiding creative or political ethos that you take with you into all the various projects that you do?

I'm alive in this moment and you're alive in the moment, and I have to acknowledge that in some way, and it's important to me.

Whitney: Thank you for that question. I think going back to those Sunday mornings with my grandfather, may he rest in peace, when you go into a Black church, the pastor knows you are there, you're called to be there. So I don't understand or know how to make work for the live stage or theatrical performance or musical performance, the live venue of theatremaking and storytelling, without acknowledging the audience. I'm alive in this moment and you're alive in the moment, and I have to acknowledge that in some way, and it's important to me. So that's definitely much at the center of my ethos, an acknowledgement of presence. I'm here, the performers are here, you're here, let's go on this journey together. It might be a difficult journey. It might be one with music or without, but that is how I enter every project. How are we going to make this story accessible for an audience? Because if I didn't care about that, I could just put it on a loan at home.

Jordan: That live component of the theatre is [that] we are experiencing things in simultaneity and also, as growing up in the church, but also growing up in Black theatre and being a part of Black theatre, all of that is coming together, the audience. There's a very thin line, if there's a line at all, between audience and performer when it comes to Black performance. I love thinking about that with you.

Leticia: I'll also say, Jordan, before you ask the next question, that there's something really interesting about what you're saying, because I think there's, at least with a lot of contemporary Black playwrights, I see Dominique Morisseau, Cullud Wattah, what is her name?

Jordan: Erika Dickerson-Despenza.

Leticia: Yes, Erika Dickerson-Despenza writing these audience notes within the programs, talking—

Jordan: Even Aleshea Harris right?

Leticia: Yeah. Aleshea Harris, yes. Writing these program notes and acknowledging that an audience is there and that there's many forms in which their participation can take versus what, my experience at least, has been in many theatres where I am the minority, is that it's the decorum [of] theatre where you sit quietly and you laugh when you're supposed to laugh. And that's not the way that I grew up interacting with people in live spaces, specifically other Black folks.

And I think the shows that I've gotten to experience of yours where you were directing is I always felt that invitation, even if it wasn't explicitly named. I think about The Amen Corner, the opening number where they're praising and worshiping. And I remember me and Jordan seeing that with one of our actual graduate mentors, Melissa Blanco Borelli, who actually now teaches at Northwestern. And we are moving and nodding and feeling like we are in relationship to what's actually happening on stage. So I think that is really critically important, but also to connect those links that I see that's happening right now within Black theatre that seems to be critically important to how we experience theatre.

Whitney: I agree with that. And I think when you caught me with Amen Corner, that was really my first time of acknowledging how powerful it could be because for What to Send Up When It Goes Down, that is very much structurally a part of the play. The playwright makes it very clear that the audience is part of this moment, this reckoning, this teaching, this healing. But I wanted to see, couldn't a more straight play have the same level of inclusion, the same level of openness and The Amen Corner, to this day, is one of my favorite projects I've ever worked on because the combination of traditional scene work, music, and then just witnessing that's encouraged throughout the piece. And that was an experiment for me. Can all this exist even with straight play elements in there?

Jordan: Oh, it was beautiful. If you didn't see it, listeners, you missed out. Hopefully it's recorded somewhere for posterity. And I'm curious, I'll be in New York in a few weeks, I'll get to experience this for myself, but I believe you're having your second Broadway directorial project going on currently and that is The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown that you directed. Can you speak a bit to the process of working on this revival for Broadway and the re-imagining of this central couple? I'm sure in other productions there's been diverse casting, but on the Broadway stage and in this particular audience, we're being reintroduced to the central couple as an interracial couple with Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas in the main roles. And so can you talk about how you find those nuances with casting these two actors in these particular roles and your approach to directing that particular musical?

You have two choices as your career grows and matures as an artist. You can open yourself up to change or not.

Whitney: Thank you for that. So all my conversations about what this production was going to be began with the playwright, composer, and orchestrator, Jason Robert Brown. And I've really enjoyed being in dialogue with him because you have two choices as your career grows and matures as an artist. You can open yourself up to change or not. And this musical has been done across the world. It has been done in the Philippines. There was an African-American cast that did it during the quarantine. It's been done all across the US. It's been done in the UK. This is a show that the larger musical theatre community and theatre community is a part of. And so he had long opened up the casting of this production. So I think it's important to note that we are in dialogue with a twenty five-year-old history of the play that's been going along as such.

And for my conception of this production, I just went back to the text first. When I was finding the concept, I actually turned the albums off and just went back to what Jason wrote because he's a playwright as well. And he wrote a story about two artists falling in love in New York and their relationship crumbling into dust. And that's really the tea. This is about two young artists who get in it with each other. One of them makes it big, and in this moment, one of them does not.

And I feel like, for me, besides being an avid fan of the show, I feel like I've been both a Jamie and a Kathy in my life. I'm experiencing this moment right now, which I'm really grateful. But I've also done summer stock in Ohio, and one of Kathy's big numbers is about going to Ohio for summer stock. You better believe I've done summer stock in Ohio, in Virginia, and Southern Illinois. I did one [summer] where you were in Hair one day and Show Boat the next. So for me, I was a Kathy. I was a Kathy, so why couldn't this Kathy be a Black woman? She's an artist who's not hitting it big and trying to find her way and in love with someone who is hitting it big. And so I just started there.

I told myself sometimes I like to strip stories down to their most basic element. And for me, when I recite what this plot is about for me, it very much goes “once upon a time, there was a young man and a young woman who fell in love in New York. One of them was Jewish, one of them was a musical theater artist. They fall in love, they get married and their relationship falls apart.” And when I just went back there, I was like, "Well, who do I want to see in this production? And what do I want to do different?" And I just wanted powerhouse performances. I wanted to hear the score sung in a new way, and I want it to be reflective of now. It's not a timepiece. It's not set in New York twenty-five years ago. Our project is set in New York right now. What's that look and feel like? Can we do it?

Jordan: Oh, I'm so excited to see it. I have never seen Last Five Years on stage. I was thinking about that. I was like, "I've never seen it on stage." I saw the movie. I've listened to the score, but I'm really excited to see this production and your particular take on it.

Leticia: When I watched the movie, I was like, "Jamie, you would. You hit it big and leave the hometown girl behind. She was holding it down for you."

Whitney: That is very much this production. It's giving that. Inter-artistic relationships are very fascinating and interesting. And when ambition and success intercut a relationship between two artists, you got to just watch what happens live. You know what I mean? And I should say also, this is an interfaith story. The character Jamie identifies as Jewish, and Kathy is from a Catholic background. I, myself, have been in interfaith relationships. I see them all around me, and that's important to me as well. The idea that these people are coming... They were always coming together cross-culturally. A cross-cultural marriage was always a part of the story. So this is just looking at that a different way.

Leticia: Right, right. Yeah, I've always been a fan of the Jonas Brothers, the Year 3000.

Whitney: Back in the day.

Jordan: Nick was mine. Nick was my favorite. I was like, "I saw the potential." Everyone was a Joe girl. But I was like, "I'm a Nick girl. He got potential. Y'all don't see it, but I see it."

Leticia: Very, what do they say, “blue-eyed soul,” He got that little flavor that you're like, "Okay." (singing) I still get jealous.

Jordan: Exactly.

Leticia: Clearly, we cannot sing. We're not going to be on Broadway anytime soon.

Whitney: But you know what? I have to admit, I, too, am a big fan and oh goodness, him and Adrienne have been so incredible to work with. Their work ethic is a wake-up call. This is a two-hander musical. There is nowhere to hide. There is nowhere to escape. And the way that they've held each other throughout the entire rehearsal process and just showed up for each other, I'm never going to forget it. And it's reminded me, show up your best. Bring all of yourself to the work and just go for it. I've really loved working with the both of them.

Leticia: Right, right. And let us not be remiss, Adrienne Warren is also that girl. So this is a Black feminist theatre podcast. So we are also going to give love there. And the combination seems so exciting to me. And I'm so jealous that Jordan gets to go, and I don't.

Jordan: (singing) I still get jealous. I'm just kidding.

Leticia: Jordan's going to stand up in the middle. They're going to kick you out of the theatre. Let's transition a bit because you also, as I mentioned earlier, multi-hyphenate, in 2019, you had your original musical Definition at the Sundance Theatre Lab, which shout-out to Sundance and theatre and funding and support for artists, especially in this time. You know what I'm saying?

Jordan: I don't think Sundance Theatre Lab is—

Whitney: I'm so happy you brought it up because there's rumblings of support returning for theatre arts. So also, I want to give a double shout out to people who are holding it down and still making spaces where artists can incubate new work. If we give up on that, then we're all just going to have to keep remaking movies, which is okay, but there's something to the original story, and we need that. So Sundance, that was a really magical time that year.

Leticia: Yeah, but you're so right, those incubators are so important. And I think about our social political moment now and all the funding and support for artists being stripped. And Jordan and I are doing research for one of our theatre history podcasts about the Federal Theatre Project and how that was integral to Black theatre and such. So yes, we uplift that and fingers crossed that it happens and Sundance Theatre Lab returns, but your musical Definition examines the mental, physical, and sexual health of African-American women through multimedia exploration. What was the inspiration for this particular project?

Whitney: Oh my gosh. It's weird. This is my weirdest show I've ever written, and I'm still waiting for someone to let me do this full production because it slaps. The world just needs to get ready for it. It's two things that inspired me. The first was Passing Strange. I love that musical.

Leticia: Yes.

Whitney: I love the musical. It's iconic. And I was in the Chicago production of Passing Strange when I was a musical theatre girl, or when I was a Kathy, and I fell in love with it so much. So I wanted to make a concert musical that got inside a Black woman's psychology. And then the other weird thing that inspired is I just fell in love with René Magritte. René Magritte was a surrealist painter, and he famously, to all the listeners, made that painting with the apple in front of the guy's face. And I saw that painting, and I had the most trippy, strange out of body experience. And so I just started dreaming about this woman who is not an artist, but has a creative awakening when she goes to the museum.

And the last thing that inspired is my godfather, who is Liberian, whom I love so much. He was a security guard at the Art Institute of Chicago for maybe almost thirty years. So when I was a little girl, I would go to the museum and walk around and get to play and do all this stuff. So I have all these weird museum memories. And also my Godfather is very handsome, so these crazy women would fall in love with him. There's so many stories. And so I wanted to make a musical about a woman's awakening. And guys, that musical is done. You heard it first. I hope someone produces it in the next—

Leticia: Do it.

Jordan: Yes, do it, do Definition. Oh my gosh, because I would love to see that and hear that and experience that. Go ahead.

Leticia: There was a portion of it online.

Whitney: There was a mini version of it during the quarantine with the—

Leticia: We watched it, Jordan.

Jordan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God.

Whitney: I think it's going to be a trip if I can ever get it up. The music is really fun, and the subject matter is just very surreal.

Leticia: Right, right, right. I love how you're also pushing forward very much in the tradition of Passing Strange and the musical. I remember me and Jordan watched it. I was like—yes, wait, it was during the pandemic where we were all locked up inside and we were watching it. We were like, "Oh, this is new Whitney White that just dropped." It was like Beyoncé. We were like, "Let's put it on the TV."

Jordan: Exactly. Oh my God. Wow, the pandemic. Okay, yes, keeping on the same train of you being a writer, you have also, I believe, written for TV. I'm a Virgo, Boots Riley's prime show and—

Leticia: And Jordan's a Virgo, so Jordan's like...

Jordan: Thank you. As soon as I saw the title, I was like, "I'm about to be so annoying." And also, I love the show. And also, your original, I don't know if you want to call it a musical, a concert musical or a performance piece, Macbeth in Stride is going to go up pretty soon at BAM.

Whitney: Fingers crossed, y'all.

Jordan: I would love to hear more about that.

Whitney: If you're in New York, come to BAM.

Jordan: Yes. So this being an examination of Macbeth and yourself being in it as Lady Macbeth, can you talk about that show, the inspiration behind it and what it means to examine this character, this Lady Macbeth character who I love? I love Lady Macbeth. I really do. I love Macbeth generally, but I really love Lady Macbeth.

Whitney: But this it, I feel like the answer to this question is that... Can I ask you, Jordan, why do you... Because I love Lady Macbeth too, and it's a musical adaptation of Shakespeare's play with a very contemporary spin. But why do you love Lady Macbeth? Because I find a lot of Black women love Lady Macbeth.

Jordan: Speak on it.

Whitney: And people are like, why did you want to do it? Well, so tell me, Jordan, why do you like Lady Macbeth? I bet we have the same reason.

Jordan: Oh my gosh. Because ambition, just absolute unrelenting ambition. I think she's one of the most complex Shakespearean women because that speech she has... We always say, "I'm not a Shakespeare girlie” on this podcast, but we have ended up talking a lot about Shakespeare on this podcast, Leticia. But that speech she has where she's like, "Unsex me here so I can..." She's the woman behind the man trope. But she originated that. And that feels relatable to me as a Black woman because I feel like I'm often in that position where I'm the woman behind so many different things, but I don't ever get the credit.

Whitney: And then they call you messed up in the head. Then they be like, "She's crazy."

Jordan: Exactly. And I was like, "She's not crazy. I understand exactly what she's trying to do." Obviously she wants to murder and come to power and stuff like that.

Whitney: Yeah, don't kill people, but yes.

Jordan: I don't really relate to that. But just the unrelenting appetite for power that people just demonize her for, I find that really relatable.

Whitney: I do too. I think these are the reasons why I fell in love with it. 2014, I read the play because I was assigned to the infamous dagger scene in my MFA program, and when I read it and heard it, she sounded like women I knew. She sounded like me. She sounded like my friends. The witches were funky and rapping to me in my brain and the whole play manifested itself as a musical experience.

And then in 2015, I had to put together a solo recital. When you graduated from a lot of these programs, they make you perform alone or whatever for forty-five minutes. And I was like, "Well, I want to do all of Lady Macbeth's language set to music." And that's how it started. And then it became a much bigger project because once I realized that all my favorite Shakespearean women kill themselves by the end of the play or are killed, I just had to start asking that question of why. And then I started looking around at movies, television shows, books—the idea of the woman going mad and ending her own story. This is a big trope. You can probably see a blockbuster that has that same narrative.

And so I just started asking myself, "Why is that there? And what is it doing to us now?" I am of the belief that stories that stick around for hundreds of years affect our lives. And while I'm an avid lover of Shakespeare, and I think this musical adaptation is for Shakespeare lovers, I'm also asking, "What's up with us? Why is this relevant still?" And the Macbeth in Stride is a part of a larger series of four women, four characters that I look at all through this musical lens, just trying to figure out what's going on here and what's it doing to us.

Every time you see an ambitious woman, someone calls her a Lady Macbeth. Someone says, "She's cold, she's cutthroat." Every time someone talks about the glass ceiling, every time someone says, "Oh, well, she's way too in love. She's crazy in love," that's even a Beyoncé... “Crazy in love,” to be too ambitious for love or for power, why does it not end well for us? So I don't have all the answers, but I have some questions and I have some incredible cast members with me who are fabulous, and we ask these questions together in an incredible theatrical evening.

Leticia: So basically what I'm hearing is y'all need to get down to BAM and see Macbeth in Stride because this is something that you will not want to miss, especially because it's a part of a series. You got to see the first one so you can see the other ones as well.

Whitney: Yes.

Leticia: Okay. So watching your career, as I mentioned earlier, has been such a treat and so delicious. You've had the opportunity to work with some of the most promising Black playwrights of our generation that I would say: Jocelyn Bioh's Jaja's African Hair Braiding, Donja Love's soft,Aleshea Harris, many things, but On Sugarland, for example, James Ijames, The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington. What excites you about these crops of Black playwrights and what do you hope for the future of Black theatre?

Whitney: Thank you for the question. I think I'm going to start with the second half of it. What's my hope for the future because we all need to be talking about the future, what we're going to do, what we want to do, how we're going to help each other do what we want to do. And I'm just excited for us to keep going. I think the crop of artists you just mentioned, Donja Love, all of them, Donja, Aleshea, James, Charlie, all of these people have exploded the format of storytelling and situated Black characters at the heart of very deep inquiries.

They are playing with humor and violence and history and their audiences in this brilliant way. And so I feel like I've weirdly had the fortune of coming up in this Renaissance of Black playwriting. Everyone from Jeremy O. Harris to James Ijames, they are pushing the boundaries to find new ways to tell our stories, because our stories are human stories that are useful for everyone to see. And so I just want everyone to keep going. If the tastes of artistic institutions are changing, if people are "rolling back" things and opportunities for us, we still have to keep going. We have to persist. We must persist. So that's what I'm feeling for the future. The C word, community, might become very important and necessary to us all so that we can keep telling our stories.

Leticia: I feel like we need a Black theatre summit. You know those old photos where it was Toni Morrison and then Pearl Cleage and all these Black creatives, and you see them just hanging out and having conversation, like an S Street salon, Georgia Douglas Johnson-esque. I feel like that's going to be critically important to have spaces for us to have conversations, like you said, community, and I love what you are offering for us in this moment where everything is chaos. And this is also from someone who is American but not living in America. As I will probably say multiple times, listeners, on multiple podcasts, because I want to say that even though I'm American, my context that I'm living is quite different. And in Canada it's interesting because Black [American] plays quite frequently make itself across the border, but the inverse is not the same. I don't see a lot of Black Canadian playwrights being produced in the United States, which now that I'm situated here, I'm thinking about how we can have a conversation between Black Canadian theatre and Black American theatre and how those boundaries and those borders are more porous than we imagine.

Whitney: Yes. This is the thing, intercontinental collaboration communication is key. And I was doing some work in London with Lynn Nottage last year, and I'll have some coming up, and the Black American experience has legs. It moves around in this incredible way, and there is a reason for that, but it is probably time for an even bigger dialogue. You know?

Leticia: Yeah, definitely so.

Jordan: I feel like this is a really good place for us to... I guess, I do want to ask this question around influence and return. You mentioned Lynn Nottage and that being one of the sparks, but do you have other plays or playwrights or even other forms of other artistic things that you keep returning to that have influenced you or other things that have inspired your craft?

Whitney: So I think Suzan-Lori Parks is another architect I think of my experience I want to elevate. I was in a production of In the Blood in graduate school that also changed my life. Kia Corthron’s Breath, Boom, that's another structurally brilliant piece that I love very much. So I think that those three women have had huge bearing on me. But even our great poets, Zora Neale Hurston is someone I look to. Josephine Baker is someone I look to. Baldwin, of course, someone I look to. Steve McQueen, the filmmaker, Black British film director, really doing shocking, beautiful work in the art world and the film world, and likewise Questlove's films that are out.

Questlove as a filmmaker, I think, has been one of my largest sources of inspiration lately because here's a man who's a musician, a drummer, and he's like, "Actually, I have an idea here. I have an eye for this other medium." And he's gone and he's done it. And I recently saw a screening of his latest film about Sly, Sly Lives!, and I was blown away by it. In the film, he's looking at the term of Black genius, and I really recommend you listeners get your hands on this and watch it. So Questlove is someone I've been looking to a lot.

But I love Black art. I love all art, so I'm always trying to look in different mediums, look at photographers, look at painters, sculptors, filmmakers. Those are the things that keep me going right now. But Questlove has been on my mind a lot because his first film was just such a beautiful snapshot of the Black community. And then the new one is such a larger look at the music industry and what can happen to you. And the interviews are beautiful. D'Angelo has a couple interviews in that film that are very unforgettable and haunting to me. Those are my sources.

Jordan: I've been listening to his audiobook, Music is History, I want to say.

Whitney: I need to add that to my queue.

Jordan: Yeah, it's really great. And audio, I'm not even an audiobook person, but I love when people read their own. Anyways, it's really, really fantastic. So yes, I think of Questlove as well. I love Questlove.

Leticia: Yeah. I'll also just say I'm glad you mentioned Kia Corthron and I feel like she doesn't get the attention. My fellow Taurus sister, not my actual sister, but sister in the Black sense. Great playwright, had been writing for a very long time. So yes, shout out to her. And I think you already got us on this wave of a closing question that we like to ask everyone. Do you have any further recommendations for our listeners, books, things to listen to, things to watch, whatever you want to offer?

Whitney: Yes, I love this. So the book that I am really in love with right now is called Afropean: Notes From Black Europe, and it's a callback to our conversation about Black theatre community in Canada and here and London, the cross-cultural dialogue that we're already having, but we could probably have more formally. There's a book called Afropean by Johnny Pitts, and it's incredible. It's also a great listen. It's a great read. I've been going back and forth between both, but he's traveling throughout Europe and through these encounters with Black Europeans he meets, drops you in to a larger historical context of the place, whether he's in Amsterdam or London. So it's a sociological text, but gives me just a portrait that I have never had before of the ways that colonialism and the diaspora are beautiful, but sometimes fractured diaspora that's all over just the threads between Black experience all across Europe. Afropean is something I really, really recommend right now. And what am I watching? Can I bring up something trashy? I feel so—

Jordan: Yes.

Leticia: Yes, of course.

Whitney: I'm always a high-low kind of girl, and along with my fancy European book on the Black experience, I have to say, the new season of Real Housewives Atlanta has me by a chokehold right now. I love this.

Leticia: Is it back to the old days?

Whitney: It's back and I'm enjoying it. That's my other thing that's getting me through these crazy times. And then there's another book I'm reading called Black England by a female writer. It's so good. Gretchen is her name, Gretchen Gerzina. Black England is so good. It's another kaleidoscope portrait of a Black diasporal community, but very focused on England only, and the way she goes through all the historical records and real accounts of us who were living way back when, I think, is something everyone should read. And she also does it with so much humor and personality. Those are the two books I like to recommend right now.

Leticia: Wonderful, wonderful. We over here at Daughters of Lorraine are full people. I used to watch this show called Empire, which I called my stories. I still sometimes dabble in Married at First Sight.

Whitney: Oh my God, not Married at First Sight. We all dabble. We all dabble.

Jordan: We watched all the seasons. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, this has been such a treat. So obviously, our listeners and I are all going to go see The Last Five Years. We're all going to go see Macbeth in Stride at BAM. But are there any upcoming things or things you're looking forward to that you can tell us about? What's next for you?

Whitney: I think I can't uplift enough how much I love The Last Five Years and how brave and beautiful the performers are. And it's a big deal that Nick and Adrienne are in this story on such a big stage. So that's the one I'm like, "Come on out and see them." They're so wonderful on stage together. I think you'll enjoy the show.

Jordan: Yay.

Leticia: Yay.

Jordan: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Whitney, for stopping by Daughters of Lorraine and talking to us. This has been such a treat for both of us, I know. And so it is just amazing anytime we get to hear from you.

Leticia: And I just want to say thank you. I don't know if me and Jordan have ever been formerly able to thank you for that early support when we were really just dipping our toe in the podcast thing and just being affirmed by yourself as someone who thought the work that we were doing was valuable and the willingness to talk to us and chat with us, it truly was formative into what we are today and in who we are as artists and scholars. Truly, truly, truly just want to thank you.

Jordan: Was that our first... It's fifth season now.

Whitney: I think so. Thank you. I love your podcast. I love following you both. Thank you for the wonderful coverage you give our discipline rather in your medium. And just keep going. I'll be here listening to every episode.

Leticia: All right, y'all, we will see you next time on Daughters of Lorraine. Bye.

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 @dolorrainepod, 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 a review on those platforms. This helps other people find us. You can also find a 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 the theater community needs to hear? Visit howlround.com and submit your ideas to the commons.