I thrilled to be working as a dramaturg with poet and playwright Claudia Rankine on her new play HELP, which runs at The Shed March 10-April 5. The whole team is super talented and amazing!! Director Taibi Magar, actress Roslyn Ruff, choreographer Shamel Pitts, set designer Mimi Lien, composer Jerome Ellis, costume designer Dede Ayite, and sound designer Mikaal Sulaiman. I feel so grateful to be in the room everyday!
This show is unlike anything I have ever worked on our heard about and will be SO POWERFUL.
Get your tickets here!
From The Shed:
“I write to provoke dialogue and to transform how we think about what it means to live and breathe in the world.”
—Claudia Rankine
Acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine (Citizen: An American Lyric, The White Card) examines the nature of white male privilege in Help, a powerful new play commissioned by The Shed.
Roslyn Ruff (Theater: Fairview; Film: Marriage Story; TV: Divorce, Pose) stars as the Narrator, who recounts Rankine’s real-life conversations with white men that take place in transitional spaces like airports. As the stories unfold through monologues and staged scenarios, with Ruff supported by a cast of white male actors and dancers, Help explores how these conversations can go right, wrong, or raise new questions.
Directed by Obie Award-winner Taibi Magar (Is God Is, Soho Rep), Help builds on Rankine’s ongoing investigation into whiteness, elements of which were shared in her recent, widely read New York Times Magazine essay, “I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.”
Rankine’s body of work, for which she has been awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, crosses lyric poetry and prose essay to navigate questions of race, healthcare, loneliness, and what it means for a life to matter in American society today.
Recommended for ages 14 and up; includes adult language and content around white supremacy, racism, and misogyny