Is God Is / What to Send Up When It Goes Down

(Paperback)

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Furious and incandescent Harris writes so blisteringly that the actors could just let the languages flames carry them along. Helen Shaw,Time Out New YorkonIs God Is

An explosive epic that examines the cyclical nature of violence,Is God Isfollows twin sisters who undertake a dangerous journey to exact revenge upon their father at the behest of their dying mother.

Aleshea Harris turns theater into a monument, ephemeral but real, to ongoing pain. You cant tear down a statue that never shows up outside. Vinson Cunningham,New YorkeronWhat to Send Up...

What to Send Up When It Goes Downis a play-pageant-ritual response to anti-Blackness in America. It is a challenge to us all: to heal through expression, expulsion, and movement.

Reviews

[An] excellent revenge fantasy...furious and incandescent.--Helen Shaw "Time Out New York on Is God Is" A rich, funny, unnerving, exhilarating gold mine.--Sara Holden "New York Magazine on Is God Is" Harris had taken her artistic forebear's Ntozake Shange's loose-woven theatrical fabric and stretched into something tighter and crisper, capable of resounding like a struck drumhead.--Helen Shaw "Time Out New York on What to Send Up When it Goes Down" What to Send Up is not derivative, but it is a worthy inheritor of a couple of different strands of socially-critical theater. This is theater that sets out to do something: be that heal, expose, purge, condemn, motivate, or all of the above.--Alison Walls "Exeunt Magazine on What to Send Up When it Goes Down" A snarly new master of high-octane carnage has risen into view. And she--yes, she--is putting her own audacious stamp on that most venerable of pop genres...Is God Is sees fit to bring down the house. --Ben Brantley "The New York Times on Is God is" If What to Send Up... is a receptacle for the rage that is part and parcel of life for many African-Americans, a piece that encourages its audience to respond with cathartic yells and tears, it is also shaped by a rarefied theatrical intelligence. You may not be entirely aware of its artistry until after it's over, or realize that the show you've seen is also a very good play.--Ben Brantley "New York Times on What to Send Up When it Goes Down"

Author Bio

Aleshea Harris is a playwright, performer and educator who received an MFA in Writing for Performance from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been presented many places, including: the Costume Shop at American Conservatory Theater, Playfest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater, VOXfest at Dartmouth, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Theatre @ Boston Court, L'Ecole de la Comedie de Saint-Etienne, National Drama Center in France and in the 2015 anthology, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Harris has been commissioned by American Conservatory Theater (Crack.Rumble.Fly., 2016) and CalArts' Center for New Performance/La Comedie de Saint-Etienne (The Gap, ongoing). Aleshea is a MacDowell Fellow, Hedgebrook Alum and winner of the American Playwriting Foundation's 2016 Relentless Award in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman for her play Is God Is. She was awarded the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize.