Antoinette Nwandu

Pass Over

Antoinette Nwandu

Pass Over combines two seminal yet disparate texts of Western literature—the Book of Exodus and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot —and transforms their themes of escape and the existential challenges of waiting in her depiction of two young Black men as they joke and dream about someday “passing over” into a new life while simultaneously trying to survive in a hostile and dangerous environment. The play was first produced at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in the summer of 2017, with Danya Taymor directing, and moved to Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center in New York the following summer. At one of the Steppenwolf performances, award-winning film director, producer, and writer Spike Lee filmed it and posted the resulting film on Amazon Video. The film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival where it was praised by the Hollywood Reporter , among other publications. The Steppenwolf production sparked enormous controversy in the press—a “whitelash,” in Nwandu’s words—for the play’s so-called reverse racism in its portrayal of the white characters. In a response Nwandu penned for American Theatre , she points out that complacent privilege, represented by the genteel Mister, is just as pernicious and dangerous as the more outwardly hostile aggression of Ossifer, a menacing cop. She concluded, “I write plays that hold a mirror up to society, that expose the darkness as a means to finding light. This is necessary work. Healing work.” Nwandu is a star on the rise; among her most prestigious awards are the Whiting Award for Drama, the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble Company’s Douglas Turner Ward Prize, and a Literary Fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony, the Sundance Theater Lab, the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, the Kennedy Center, and many others. In addition to her work as a playwright, Nwandu is working on a novel.