The Second Harvard Black Playwrights Festival Comes to Farkas Hall

Last weekend marked the second Black Playwrights Festival at Harvard, during which both renowned black playwrights and black students at the College showcased their works over the course of several days. Their opening night featured performance excerpts from “Pass Over” by Antoinette C. Nwandu ’02 and Phillip Howze’s “Frontieres san Frontieres,” each followed by conversations between the two playwrights about their works as well as a Q&A session with the audience.

Nwandu, a playwright, currently lives in Brooklyn and writes for theater and television. Her piece, “Pass Over,” portrays a blend of modern settings and biblical allusions, detailing a conversation between a man named Moses and his friend as they speak casually about their desires to rise socioeconomically and the issue of police brutality.

“The reason I wrote this play was because I was and am still very angry about the state-sanctioned killings of young, black men, and so I just want audience members to be able to embrace and contemplate the humanity of these young characters,” Nwandu said.

Nwandu also had some thoughts about the power of theater and expression. “I think playwriting is a space of empathy,” Nwandu said. “If I can receive a story about someone who is different from me, but sense their humanity and our shared humanity, then I am a better person.”

Phillip Howze was the second playwright to have his excerpt showcased that night, his piece “Frontieres san Frontieres” depicting what he calls “a play of clowns.” Howze is a newly appointed playwriting lecturer in the Theater, Dance, and Media department.

“I’m really interested in what it means for characters to express a sense of deep embarrassment or humiliation that shows us their soul,” Howze said. “I really embrace that kind of primal sense of recreation and play and creativity which is kind of childlike.”

Both 10 minute excerpts were performed by current students at the College, including Julius Z. R. Wade ’20 and Ruva Chigwedere ’21.

“It’s just all in my mind of matter really, channeling different versions and aspects of yourself, twisting and bending them to the people that you’re playing, that you’re representing and bringing to life,” Wade said about performing and embodying the characters in “Pass Over.”

Chigwedere is an actress and one of the students taking initiative to maintain the vitality of the festival, subbing in last minute to play a role in Howze’s “Frontieres san Frontieres.”

“I found it so moving tonight that we are in Farkas Hall, where a lot of people have performed at Harvard University, and there were two black creatives who had complete authority over the room at Harvard University,” Chigwedere said. “I thought that was one of the most spectacular, moving things that I’ve been a part of in my entire time at Harvard.”