The Brooklyn Rail

Faith is full of queerness because faith is full of mystery.

In one biblical episode, Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, is thrown into a cistern as the Babylonians siege Jerusalem. Left to die in the reservoir’s muddy darkness, Jeremiah’s faith is rattled until King Zedekiah’s servant discovers and takes pity on the prophet. The servant—only known as Ebed-Melech, which translates from Hebrew to “slave of the king”— was a Cushite and likely a eunuch; their skin would be dark, their gender identity queer. Savvy, Ebed-Melech turned old rags, taken from the bowels of the palace, into a homespun pulley to raise Jeremiah to the surface. The act mirrors the subversion and theatricality of contemporary drag, or trashion, in which the discarded becomes the scene stealer.

(pray), nicHi douglas’s religious choreopoem, also empowers those who may be forgotten and subverts norms while plunging the well of faith. In (pray)’s many vibrant hymns, common reverent words get a matrilineal makeover—“amen” turns into “again,” and “father” becomes “freedom”—bringing focus less to Jesus and more to the community church enables. Afro-futuristic in nature, (pray), with its dozen Black women and femme performers, loosely mimics the length and structure of a Baptist service, using it as a vehicle to imagine a house of worship for a sisterhood to better see, understand, and celebrate itself.

“During slavery,” one of the sisters (as the characters are named in the script) says, “in a culture that placed Black [femmes] at the bottom of a hierarchy of human value, Christianity gave Black women [and femmes] a sense of increased self-esteem.” The Bible extols the castaway, the meek, and, through (pray), douglas also creates a church for those who have, historically, been the most excluded in the United States.

Under douglas’s direction, sorority is easily built; the set for this Ars Nova-National Black Theatre co-production is a Baptist church in which audience and performer share pew and prayer. (Now running at Greenwich House, (pray) calls to mind Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things, a unique but similarly communal alleluia performed in the same venue last year.)

The ensemble becomes a congregation representing the breadth of Black femininity. douglas's bio notes that they create theater “with/for folx ages 2–82,” and (pray)’s cast includes a wide swath of that range with performers of various genders and skin tones speaking multiple languages: English, Spanish, and a universal one, dance.

douglas’s choreography makes complete use of the church set, created by the increasingly omnipresent design collective, dots. Movement is ethereal and searching when the Ancestor (Satori Folkes-Stone) flows through the space but also guttural and earthy when the music (by S T A R R Busby and JJJJJerome Ellis) turns percussive.

Throughout, the Singer (a charismatic Busby) leads the congregation through scriptures and songs. (Darnell White, the play’s lone male, accompanies on piano.) Busby and Ellis are natural psalmists; their hymnals are earworms and befitting of a Baptist service, though the sneaky palette unfolds and expands: ballads, indie pop, and hip hop permeate this spiritual offering. The infectious cast sings with gusto, and each sister—Ariel Kayla Blackwood, Ashley De La Rosa, Tina Fabrique, Taylor Symone Jackson, Ziiomi Louise Law, Aigner Mizzelle, Naderah Munajj, Gayle Turner, and D. Woods—warms the audience with buzzy chatter and churchgoing regality.

Amara Granderson rounds out the company as Free, the play’s Doubting Thomas who, seated in the choir loft, is farthest from her congregants but closest to heaven. Doubt, after all, is the mother to faith, but—tortured by uncertainty—Free looks apart from the group. Wearing DeShon Elem’s Sunday-best costumes, the women don variations on a baby blue dress, the Singer and pianist sport a rich indigo, but Free is in a midnight blue so deep it approaches a bruise.

Free is pained, but there’s beauty in the yearning: the character’s name alone suggests that liberty comes from deeper questions, not comfortable solidity. Still, Free’s monologues are more probing than piercing. They have a comedic poetry (“Is this a church—or a nice restaurant?”) and a wise melancholy (“If i press my palms together hard enough will something grow? Glow? Or is it the potential energy that forms here?”). However, in Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound design—which effectively balances vocals and instrumentation—the constant, near-distracting echo placed over Granderson’s speech reveals a soul shouting into the void but undermines its seriousness. A skilled performer, Granderson’s unmanipulated voice could evoke such ache and endurance.

For douglas, these qualities may be precursors to joy.

As a sanctuary for Black women and femmes, (pray) reclaims a home at Greenwich House. The West Village icon, over 120 years old, was originally a settlement house, assisting immigrants adapting to life in New York through skill training, nursery programs, and, broadly, community. The immigrants it served, however, were largely white, boosting Manhattan’s European-born population.

In the century-plus since Greenwich House’s founding, Black New Yorkers have experienced unsteady growth, even in neighborhoods inalienably tied to their identity. In January, the New York Times reported that “Harlem, for example, lost more than 5,000 Black people over a decade, while nearly 9,000 white people moved in. … Bedford-Stuyvesant lost more than 22,000 Black residents while gaining 30,000 white” ones.

In Greenwich House’s transformation from settlement house for the white to a church for Black folx, (pray) offers a present theatrical experience and dreams a future that can mirror it.

Late in the play, Free sees the mystical Wenge trees sprouting behind the church’s piano. Their crepuscular light hints at the unknown, but still its twinkle beckons. One sister dares and slips into the trees.

“Oh we can go in there, too?!” Free says.

Havens are more easily accessed when someone before us opens their door.