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Encountering the work of playwright Dominique Morisseau (Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, Skeleton Crew, Pipeline, Detroit’ 67), one has the sense of a writer with limitless capacity and an urgent mission. The MacArthur Fellow and Drama Desk, Obie, and Steinberg award winner’s work, written with razor-sharp intensity and deep human compassion, is epic in scope, examining systems of oppression in historical and contemporary America while also remaining grounded in the profoundly human stakes of family, community, and love.
Her piercing play Sunset Baby, originally staged by the Gate Theatre in London in 2012 then in New York by the LAByrinth Theater Company in 2013, is playing at the Signature Theatre through March 10. Elegantly directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, Sunset Baby centers on Kenyatta (a heartbreaking Russell Hornsby), a Black revolutionary and formerly incarcerated political prisoner who seeks out his adult daughter, Nina (played with lacerating force by Moses Ingram). Contrary to the versions of her he imagined while he was away, Kenyatta finds Nina leading a “Bonnie and Clyde–deal” life with her drug-dealing boyfriend, Damon (a fiery and vulnerable J. Alphonse Nicholson). What follows is less a homecoming than a reckoning, in which years spent dedicated to the political cause are held up against the all-too-human costs of devastating loss.
We spoke with Morisseau about how every character is on the brink of their own revolution, theater as a form of activism, and healing untended wounds as a path to liberation.
Vogue: Congratulations on Sunset Baby! How has a Premiere Residency at Signature Theatre supported your work and vision as an artist?
Dominique Morisseau: It gives me a home. The residency promises three productions, so for at least five years, I know where my play is going to be produced. For most writers, that’s the big hurdle we’re trying to jump in our careers. There are not enough stages for all the pages out there. To have somewhere that’s committed to putting my work up in New York City is huge.
This is an older play, but it feels very contemporary. How do you think it sits in your canon?
This is one of my more raw plays. It’s definitely not for the fainthearted. It’s more primal. It’s brutally honest. It’s like a 10-years-ago version of myself, and it’s unfiltered in a way that I love. I’m in an unfiltered space again in my life, so meeting this play now is perfect for me. I also feel like it sits in the world in a right kind of way. A good friend, the actor and educator Brandon Dirden, told me he was glad I was revisiting the play because in this era of everyone calling themselves an activist, Sunset Baby makes you look long and hard at that title for yourself and if you really believe that’s who you are. There’s a commitment level to it that most people who are calling themselves activists don’t have. And there’s a cost to it that most people are not considering. It’s about asking if you’re really built for the long haul, and the tradition of activism that comes before you, and what people are willing to sacrifice. There’s a safer form of activism these days that sits comfortably in the click of a button.
The current moment seems to reify rightness and a singularity of view. In your work broadly, and particularly in this play, you hold space for complexity. All three characters have a complicated relationship to activism.
I like to say that in Sunset Baby, all the characters are on the brink of their own revolution, their own major change. How they get there is through a confrontation of the self. And that’s the hardest part of anyone’s journey, I think. It speaks to me and where I’m at, but it also speaks to a larger moment of realizing where you stand at the apex of activism and social-justice issues and where you really fit into that mold.
The play centers on the relationship between Nina and her estranged father, Kenyatta. He’s recently come back into her life looking for something. Her boyfriend, Damon, assumes it’s drugs, but Nina explains that “he wants a different kind of product.” What “product” do you think Kenyatta is after?
There’s the tangible product of the letters from Nina’s mother, but they stand for something else. They represent that confrontation of self, a confrontation of the past, and a closing, a mending, a healing of a trauma that is untended. That’s what so many activists coming out of Kenyatta’s era of activism don’t have: healing. It’s left a gap in them, in their lives. I’m looking at that unhealed trauma that activism also brings.
This play is structured around letters: the love letters Kenyatta wants and a video letter he’s making for Nina. In a way, that gap is built into the letter-writing structure itself, the space between sending a message and when it’s received.
The idea of writing letters—of sitting down and doing something that’s more conscious and takes more effort, and is more thoughtful and solitary and reflective—is not something we’re doing socially right now. We’re so immediate and sound-bitey and clickbaity. Everything is so fast, and we’re so overwhelmed with content that we don’t spend a lot of time in a reflective space. I think we’re afraid of what comes up in reflections. You don’t get immediate gratification, except for personal growth. Communicating with yourself feels like the real way to healing. If healing takes time, reflection is what you need time to do. That’s not something we afford ourselves right now.
Do you feel like this play is a letter from your younger self to where you are now?
Maybe, but I think it’s more my father, who partly inspired the play. He’s no longer with me now, but he was with me in 2013 when I wrote it. It’s not biography—he wasn’t formerly incarcerated, and he was around for all of my life—but there are elements of my father in the character of Kenyatta. My father used to record himself all the time in videos. And when I watch these videos—even when my father was alive but especially now that he’s gone—they are the most gold for me. It used to drive me crazy when he put a camera in my face, but thank God he did because he gave me his lens—his lens on us and his lens on himself and his lens on the world around him, to have forever. And I learned so much about my father from watching the videos, more than I ever did in the flesh. Like certain idiosyncrasies, where he carried the energy in his face, even how he would scratch his head, little things. I feel like I saw through my father for the first time.
Why do you think that is?
My brother and I joke that our dad was doing selfies before there were selfies. He was doing self videos and video blogs long before those were a thing and without the expectation that they were going to be hyper-consumed by an internet. He was just doing it to document himself. There was a purity to it. He didn’t know who was going to see them—maybe just me and my brother or just himself. There was a lot of vulnerable honesty and imperfection going on because it was just private. And I felt like I could see him. Like I’m in the room with him, and I’m watching so close. The camera catches your breath, it catches your sigh, it catches your stutter. Cameras are very intimate.
It seems like the characters in this play are trying to figure out how to give themselves to someone else.
Yes, and also: Can you release yourself? Can you release your idea of someone else? Can you release your idea of controlling someone else to set yourself free? Damon needs to control Nina in order to feel validated in the relationship. But he cannot control her. Nina needs to control her father and how he processes her mother. But she can’t control him, she can’t control his grief. To get to a place of freedom is about releasing control. That’s a lesson in the play but also a lesson in my life that I have not quite maintained.
On that note, has becoming a parent changed your writing practice?
It definitely makes me waste no time because I don’t have it to give. Being a parent makes me realize my own lack of control. I have to be willing to learn and pay attention and not dictate. And as an artist I have to do the same thing.
You also write for television and film. What do you think theater in particular can offer us right now?
You can’t check out. You’re right there. You’re stuck there. You have to take what’s being presented to you and deal with whatever emotions it brings up in the moment. And you have to stay the course with the story. You don’t have time to go get your popcorn or multitask on social media or talk to a friend then rewind and catch up. The live sport means: This is what we got, it’s never going to be the same again. It’s the immediacy of “no day but today” in theater. It does a better job of connecting us and making us responsible to each other and ourselves. Theater asks you to release your control and be a voyager without knowing where you’re going, to just get on the ship.
You mentioned you’re more unfiltered now. Why is that?
I’m older, and I care less about what people think of me. I’ve learned to care less about getting approval or likes. I’ve learned the journey of my truth and how much that’s the destination for me: truth. I’m less filtered because I don’t feel like I have to compartmentalize my humanity in order to be me. I want to be myself fully. And those are the terms that make me feel the most well, mentally and spiritually. I don’t want to be here to be somebody else or a fragmented person. I want to be my whole self. I really do abide by the spiritual principle that what other people think of you is none of your business, and I try to move to that.
Do you think there’s a link between theater and activism?
Absolutely, there’s a huge link. We’re forging human connection, we’re pushing for everyone’s humanity to matter, we’re pushing for the unheard, we’re pushing for issues that are silenced to get visibility and to be in social conversations. Nina Simone believed that an artist’s duty is to reflect the times. A lot of artists, particularly in theater, sign up for Simone’s version of that mission.
You’ve spoken about the way representation in art leads to action in life—“that narrative turns into ideology, turns into action” and “how people are perceived on page, onstage, and onscreen is how they are then treated socially.” Can you say more about this?
We have the power to shift the narrative around people and how they’re thought of in the world. We have power to shape ideas not only around people but also around policy and how people are treated. Because the way we think about people dictates how they’re going to be governed. One of the greatest tools of every kind of oppression—dictatorship, war, violence—is the dehumanization of the other. The goal of war is to dehumanize the people that you’re at war against. I’ve experienced so much dehumanization of my own city, Detroit, of countries, of people. I think back to the time of the movement of the play, when there was dehumanization of activists. And in 2015 people were scared to use the hashtag Black Lives Matter. So many artists asked me, “How do you feel comfortable putting #blacklivesmatter in your posts? Do you feel like the industry is watching? Do you get called out on it, do you get in trouble for it?” And in 2020 everybody had #blacklivesmatter. It was being canvassed on major city streets, every business put it in their window, it was a part of their social media campaigns—the same people that made you feel like you were a terrorist if you put #blacklivesmatter in 2015. There’s a dehumanization of the people who are perceived to be on the other side. We have to face that we’re always all the same people. People are people, humans are humans. Art is the only thing that’s going to help us reconcile that. Live art, especially live theater, where you have to sit in and amongst the heartbeat of other people, where you have to hear their sighs with yours, hear their sniffles with yours, hear their laughter with yours: There’s no other way to make you realize how human you are than through live art.
What’s inspiring you these days?
Disruption inspires me lately. Harmful things that are happening in the world are inspiring me to contribute the opposite. Devastation in the world inspires me to put beautiful creation into the world. I’m also inspired by the courage and conviction of the next generation: the journey they have taken to accountability, to the negating of harms, to the whole idea of mental health care. The idea that we’re all so conscious of health and wellness now is an amazing and beautiful thing. That’s the next generation doing a damn good job of pushing that agenda to the forefront. And to bring it full circle, that’s the part of the trauma of activism that’s never been treated from the generations ahead to the generation now. That’s why there are all of these gaps, because there’s never been any mass concerted effort to address mental health issues. I appreciate this generation for putting a spotlight on that disconnect.
What gives you hope at this moment?
In a way, history gives me hope. Nothing is ever permanent. History teaches me things that get undone can get rebuilt. Things that burn can be built again, that the phoenix rises from the ashes. History teaches me that in bad, bad moments, there are those who are resilient and who can change the course of where things are headed, and that gives me hope. The current state of the world right now is pretty bleak in a lot of ways. But history tells me it’s impossible that it stays exactly this way. What gives me hope is a little bit of history and a little bit of the future. There are people who will not tolerate the things that we’ve all tolerated for so long, that have been harmful in our culture. And art, peoples’ stories, the fact that storytelling is changing and more stories are being told from more cultural perspectives, that gives me a lot of hope, and I want to see more of it. Knowing that there’s a way in which we might be able to hear from each other and have access to each other globally makes me hopeful.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.