"I’m reporting on a moment in time when I, a Black critic and a Black woman in America, felt the safest and most embraced by my Blackness in a theater...If you can’t imagine the comfort of being with people who look like you in a space where art is being made, it’s something like sipping from a steaming cup in the dead of winter: the warmth is precious, immediate and shocking all at once...It’s true that 'What to Send Up' feels less like a play than it does a series of cathartic experiences — which isn’t to say it isn’t beautiful theater, because it is still very much that."
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"Other shows tend to present themselves for judgment, careful to make the generalized 'audience' the center and beneficiary of the artists’ attention. Harris and White, though, stack their concern as concentrically as an atom, with Black martyrs at the center, the actors at the first orbital, the Black audience one valence further out, and the non-Black audience, spinning and watching from the outermost shell."
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"Through a series of masterful vignettes, precise movement, cultural dance, and glorious song lead by supreme vocalist Manning, Black participants are encouraged to reclaim their personal power by confronting and examining beliefs and practices associated with racism and racial bias. During the experience, there were sobs of agony, screams in anger, and later proclamations of victory and collective joy. What is meant to disrupt the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness and acknowledge the resilience of Black people hits the mark without sweeping the dirt under the rug."
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