Every black girl imagines herself a trapped princess until the day she realizes her hair grows up and hence there is no way to let down her hair for Prince Charming to climb to her. Then she is just trapped.
From Slavery to present day, the Black Woman in America has been made to feel inherently unattractive and even repulsive. She feels used but not desirable, sexy but not beautiful, wanted but not valuable. Through three reincarnations of the Black Woman in history, in different shades, shapes and textures, this play explores how Eurocentric notions of beauty have trapped Her in a permanent nightmare. What cultivates this nightmare? What stories do we tell our daughters that influence their dreams? Why do we re-tell these stories? What lullabies should we sing to our children? And can we wake up in post-racial America and live happily ever after? Or is to be post-racial to be not racial? Finally, what beds have we made for our daughters to rest in?
These are just some of the questions that I hope to ask with this piece. Each answer should be complicated and multi-layered. Is this a universal story? Probably not. But in that, it is one that isn't fully told. I've spent the past two years struggling to write my untold story and to understand my villians at every level: the jealous queens, the cowardly huntsmen, the dwarved men...This is all I could come up with.
Come see the first staged reading of the play:
Sunday November 1, 2009
3PM
Rites and Reason Theatre
directed by Jing Xu
Jing Xu discusses new work and the RPM PlayLab experience here
