A battle between art and history

Chelle, a Black mid-career artist who is running out of steam, has written a check that she’s not sure her talent can cash. When the city of Baltimore takes down the Confederate monument across the street from her childhood home, she has an idea: she’ll apply for a grant to create a piece to replace it. Years later, she’s gotten herself lost in American history and she’s no closer to a finished product. When she buys that childhood home, in a neighborhood that is more weed than flower, her circuitous process gets interrupted by her brother Willard, a history-eschewing public figure planning a Juneteenth festival in the park where the monument was, and Thalia, an interior designer who is from this world but not of it. Caught between the past, the present, and the future, Chelle is catapulted into a journey that takes her back before the Middle Passage and out beyond the bounds of this planet.

Note: After a successful run at Austin Playhouse in 2023, I decided to take another crack at the play with a more intense focus on hope and a deeper thread of Afrofuturism. The result is a play that shares the same premise as Nightbird and the same characters but is otherwise almost completely different. How exciting! Read it on New Play Exchange.

Cover photo credit: Solen Feyissa, used under CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed

The exploration of a country’s racism plays out here on a personal level by those who have been most directly impacted by it, and Thomas gives us a script that addresses these complexities with depth, ease, and often, humor.

Joni Lorraine, Broadway World

Unpacking how the aesthetics of race appear in public and private space, “Nightbird” synthesizes current events and puts a range of Black viewpoints and cultural criticisms into conversation through fully realized characters.

Courtney Thomas, Sightlines

Productions of Nightbird:
Austin Playhouse 2023 // directed by Marcus McQuirter