Affirmation Theatre Company’s Third Annual Pro Black One Acts Festival

Saturday, February 27th @ 8 PM 

Sunday, February 28th @ 2 PM 

Sunday, February 28th @ 8 PM

Epiphany Samuels was sick and tired of being cast time and time again as the token Black girl, the maid, the mammy, or in most cases, the discarded audience member on the sidelines. If she had known beforehand the amount of racism she would encounter at New York University’s highly acclaimed Tisch School of the Arts, she would not have wasted her energy and money. 

Epiphany decided “that if they didn’t wanna pick us, we would pick ourselves”, and so, in 2017, alongside her best friend and peer, Danielle Covington, she set about creating an alternative space centering students of color who had been neglected and oppressed on campus and within the competitive theater industry at large to connect and perform. 

And so Affirmation Theatre Company was born.

This upcoming weekend, Affirmation will be hosting their third annual Pro Black One Acts Festival, and for the first time ever, people from all over the world will be able to attend virtually. Affirmation’s actors, directors and producers will take the screen individually, scene-by-scene, from all over the country, with each director taking a unique approach.

Zoom Theater may sound like an oxymoron in and of itself -- I mean, after all, how can one experience the magic of theater, a live performance, over a screen? However, Affirmation is and always has been a solution-oriented, community-focused organization, and COVID is by no means stopping them from thriving. Epiphany is not at all deterred by this shift. In fact, she is thrilled. 

“No matter what medium we hold theater in, I still want to feel like I am going to the theater. I am there to be in the story, to be in the fantasy of it all, to believe what is being presented, to suspend my disbelief.  I don’t want to know the nitty gritty and all the nuts and bolts of what is going to happen in the One Acts that I am not directing, because I am also a part of the audience in those cases. I want to be surprised and to see the magic unfold in real time. You know in those movies where there’s a magician's apprentice who’s thrown into a new world in the blink of an eye? All they can do is watch from the sidelines in awe, like ‘how is this happening?’. That is what I mean by suspending my disbelief”.

As director of #SuiteReality, a one-of-a-kind choreopoem by playwright TS Hawkins, Epiphany has chosen to utilize physical theatre techniques, with a focus on freedom of movement and uninhibited expression of body through words and space, as to highlight the magic of theater.

Seven Flowers, an adorable six-year-old actress (ironic, I know), who will be starring in #SuiteReality, plays piano and violin, speaks three languages, and has been a terrific aid to Epiphany, a self-proclaimed tech grandma, acting as virtual stage manager in moments (Did you know that you can rearrange the order of screens through Zoom? Neither did Epiphany). Having a younger cast member attuned to technology from birth certainly has its perks!! And if you are anything like Epiphany, don’t fret -- Affirmation will be providing instructions to the audience on how to use Zoom before the show begins.

Despite our physical disconnection, the collective energy we bring even in a virtual setting is key to a stellar performance, because as Epiphany explains, “we always say in theater that the audience is a character in and of itself”. 

As audience members, it is important to keep in mind Affirmation’s Mission: 

Affirmation Theater Company strives to provide a brave and inclusive community for artists to celebrate and affirm diversity by bringing empowering stories to viewers ready to embrace a change in the status quo.

Epiphany highlights the importance of word choice in the aforementioned Mission Statement: “Diversity is not enough without inclusivity. That is why we created a home for everyone. No matter who you are, no matter your interests, your intersections, your marginalizations, you can always be you at Affirmation”.

As a Jamerican, Epiphany “has always been Jamacian first, African American second”. While acting, she sometimes will insert a word or two of Jamaican Patois as a shout out to her fellow Jamericans in the audience.

Affirmation’s meetings follow a cultural code true to this Mission:

“‘Come as you is’...  I'm gonna talk like me, period point blank. I’m not going to talk like this certain professor wanted me to speak because this is what the theatrical community loves... nah, I’m gonna talk like me, like… the fuck is that?” 

Medical shows include terminology that the average person cannot comprehend, and this is considered to be perfectly acceptable in the entertainment industry, but include a language other than English in your programming, even in passing, and it's an immediate no-go. 

“Theater is about the languages, not just language, but white people want us to speak their language and follow their rules, and not to complain about it, which is just another one of their rules”. 

Affirmation refuses to adhere to this White European rhetoric. 

“In theater, when you’re not white, they like to mark your play with a stamp of ‘where ya from’ -- no one says ‘the Russian play’, but when a play is set in Nigeria for example, it’s automatically called ‘the Nigerian play”’. They don’t one off white people plays, they don’t tokenize them, because their story is separated from race. We have a saying in Jamaica, it's called ‘out of many, one people’, which basically means that we celebrate everyone, that we are in awe of and inspired by all cultures.”

As a white person attending Pro Black One Acts, and as a member of society as a whole, it is important to understand that Pro-Black goes beyond appreciating cultural differences.  And so, a note to other white people who will be attending this year’s Pro Black One Acts:

“It’s one thing to say, ‘I believe in inclusivity and diversity, it’s so bad that society treats you like this, we have to change the status quo’, and so forth, but if you are only saying these things to lessen your white guilt and to be performative, if you are only showing up to our show to slap your name on our stories, rather than to actually learn from and hear our stories, just don’t come through. It’s not about you, it’s about us! Ask yourself, “How do I play a part in a system that is perpetuating these stories in the first place? What will I do to make a change and support Black lives?”

And lastly, a note to all: 

Affirmation is a space for community. Affirmation is a space for learning. Affirmation is a space for listening. And above all, this space is Pro-Black.