Pass Over. Antoinette Nwandu

      

       Pass Over

      Antoinette Nwandu

      Copyright © 2018 by Antoinette Nwandu

      Introduction copyright © 2019 by Antoinette Nwandu

      Cover artwork © Alim Smith

      “Nikes.” Words and Music by Christopher Breaux, Om’Mas Keith, Carl Palmer, Harry Palmer, Jeff Palmer and James Blake Litherton. Copyright © 2016 Heavens Research, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, EMI April Music Inc. and Buzzard And Kestrel Ltd. All Rights for Heavens Research Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. All Rights for Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, EMI April Music Inc. and Buzzard And Kestrel Ltd. Administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

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      CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Pass Over is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

      Stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance to Samuel French, Inc., 235 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, and for first-class professional rights, to ICM Partners, 65 East 55th Street, New York, NY 10022.

      Acting edition by Samuel French © 2018

       Published simultaneously in CanadaPrinted in Canada

      First Grove Press paperback edition: June 2019

      ISBN 978-0-8021-4742-4

      eISBN 978-0-8021-4743-1

      Grove Press

      an imprint of Grove Atlantic

      154 West 14th Street

      New York, NY 10011

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

      groveatlantic.com

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      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      Production Credits

      Characters

      Author’s Notes

       Act One

       Act Two

       Back Cover

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Pass Over was developed over a period of nearly five years. I am deeply grateful to the following people and institutions:

      My many hundreds of students at the Borough of Manhattan Community College for keeping me on my toes, making me a better instructor, and reminding me what beautiful language sounds like.

      Evan Cabnet, André Bishop, and LCT3; Anna Shapiro, David Schmitz, Aaron Carter, and Steppenwolf; Angelina Fiordellisi, Janio Marrero, Seri Lawrence, Katori Hall, and The Cherry Lane Mentor Project; Michael Walkup, Rachel Karpf Reidy, and P73; Jonathan McCrory and The National Black Theatre; and Shawn Rene Graham and Playwrights’ Playground at The Classical Theater of Harlem.

      Spike Lee, who read the play, saw its urgency, and preserved it on film so that people who don’t go to the theater can share in its wonder.

      Ted Hope, Scott Foundas, and Amazon Studios for giving this story such a readily accessible platform on Amazon Prime.

      All the generous and talented directors and actors who enabled development of the piece along the way: Tea Alagic, Victor Maog, and LA Williams. Also Julian Parker, Ryan Hallahan, Jaime Lincoln Smith, Eden Marryshow, Joe Tapper, RJ Brown, Frank Harts, Jeff Biehl, Ruffin Prentiss, Khiry Walker, Carl Hendrick Louis, Bill Johnson, and Malik Ali.

      And especially Jon Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood, and Gabe Ebert, whose finesse, urgency, and professionalism made me a better writer.

      To my great and good collaborator, Danya Taymor, who said yes to this wild ride without hesitation, jumped in heart-plus-brain first, and made the play sing.

      And last but not least, thank you to Graham, my lover, husband, and friend. When I’m at my lowest and worst, you believe in the work I’m doing, and even more in me. I love you.

       INTRODUCTION

      I want this introduction to be a record of the process, oftentimes uncertain and serpentine, that resulted in the birthing of this play. I was skittish and impatient when I began writing this play, but possessed of an emotion so unsettling in its demands for acknowledgement, for action, that I had no choice but to embark.

      I began writing Pass Over at the end of 2013 and completed a first draft by the summer of 2014. The first few months were tumultuous: a while earlier I had endured a developmental process for another play that left me brittle, untrusting, and creatively empty. After that play was over, I wrote a few ten-minute plays, including Vanna White Has Got to Die, which was produced in the Obie Award-winning Fire This Time’s Annual Ten Minute Festival, but it took great effort and concentration to feel something other than resentment and anguish at the prospect of setting my hand to the work of writing another full-length play.

      I knew at the outset that this play would concern a river crossing of some kind. I began by researching the routes that enslaved black people—my ancestors—took during the antebellum era, and became fascinated with stories centering around the Ohio River. I scoured ship manifests for names and very nearly decided to name my protagonist Prince, until a pair of names, Moses and Kitch, caught my attention, mostly because of the conflicts integral to their pairing. What must it have been like for an enslaved man to bear the name of a biblical patriarch who was himself born a prince and empowered to lead his people to freedom? And the name Kitch, a seemingly incomplete word whose sound arrested the breath when spoken aloud. These were