“What to Send Up When It Goes Down” by Aleshea Harris
What to Send Up When It Goes Down, photographed by Ahron R. Foster, via Playbill.
What To Send Up When It Goes Down (2020) is a play-pageant-ritual-homegoing celebration in response to the physical and spiritual deaths of Black people as a result of racialized violence. Weaving facilitated conversation, parody, song, and movement in a series of vignettes, the show creates a space for catharsis, reflection, cleansing, and healing (Playbill).
Watch a trailer for the play on YouTube >
Read more about the play on Playbill >
Aleshea Harris is a playwright, spoken word artist, author, and educator who is making Black history at the moment. What To Send Up When It Goes Down is a play-pageant-ritual response to anti-blackness. Though the play had its critically acclaimed NYC premiere with The Movement Theatre Company in 2018, the play (directed by Whitney White) was written in 2016 in direct protest to Black people killed by police officers with impunity. A living, digital memorial displays the names and faces of people whose lives continue to matter, and resources are offered to extend our healing ritual responses to tragedy.
In 1961 James Baldwin shared that “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one's work" (NPR). Over half a century later, Harris’ play explores the ongoing rage and absurdity of this reality. In an interview published in American Theatre Magazine, Harris spoke of this rage and anger:
We’re mad and we have a right to be mad, because the gaslighting of anti-Blackness is: ‘You imagined that.’ Or ‘It’s really about economics, not race.’ There are so many ways people duck and dodge the uncomfortable reality that anti-Blackness is ingrained in the fabric of our country. I wanted it to be a no-gaslighting space. Black people feel however they feel and that’s okay in this space, and should be okay in the world. And since I am having a Black woman’s experience as a human on this planet, I know very well that there’s this stereotype, there’s this mythology about Black women being mad. In order to challenge that, there’s pressure from the community for us not to be mad, to be something else, to be a carefree Black girl. I’m not interested in being bound by either of those pressures/expectations. I just want to be my authentic self.
Aleshea Harris
Screenshot from Harris' website, depicting the digital series "Show Love to Black People". "In What to Send Up When It Goes Down the audience is invited to write love letters to Black people as a way of celebrating our inherent worth."
Her first published play, Is God Is, won the American Playwriting Foundation’s 2016 Relentless Prize, and this year she became the first Black woman to win the Hermitage Greenfield Prize as the prize enters its 13th year. In a recent interview about receiving the prize, Harris shared that her work “springs from some kind of wrestling I’ve been doing personally, often something I’ve had trouble reconciling. Or if I’m horrified by something, I find I have to lean forward and try to unpack and try to understand something about it.” In her work, Harris offers exploratory spaces for healing that unapologetically centers us as Black people.
Reflection Questions
- Black history is made each and every day. Consider: who are you learning from today that's creating the works that will make history tomorrow?
- Consider: why is theatre such a powerful form of art? How does experiencing theatre vs. listening to music, or reading a book, for example, change your perception of the topic?
- Consider how you can support Black artists, including filmmakers, playwriters, songwriters, etc. throughout 2021.
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