OVERVIEW

Claudia Alick decided to continue the work of The Ferguson Moment with a national multi-perspective approach. She worked with The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and reached out to short form theater maker Dominic D’Andrea and The One‐Minute Play Festival (1MPF), and Jacqueline Thompson in St. Louis to continue. The Every 28 Hours Plays were created with the goal of capturing the history in the making of our current Civil Rights Movement and giving us something to respond with. 

The title of the project is inspired by the contested nature of the statistic that every twenty-eight hours a black person is killed by security guard, vigilante, or police by extrajudicial violence. When the Malcolm Grass Roots Movement released their report, the claim went viral, inspiring denial and questions about their methodology. For us this raised the larger question: every 28 hours, every 48, every 98, how many hours would it take for this not to be a national issue of vital importance? #BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17 year old Trayvon was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder. We use #Every28Hours because as a nation #BlackLivesMatter is still being treated as a question.

The Every 28 Hours Plays centers marginalized communities with an intersectional lens. The plays have been produced in collaboration with and reflect experience of black, latino, indigenous, LGTBQ, undocumented, and community.  

While all theater is a political act, we have always been very clear that this piece of theater was created without a singular viewpoint. Our curatorial process was open, and we asked our playwrights to reflect on the civil rights movement that is happening today and the events that inspire the Black Lives Matter movement. The process has included dialogue with both law enforcement and activists, and it continues to. Theater, culture workers, and law enforcement are designed to serve the community in their own unique ways. Theater offers a space to explore our differences, find our commonalities, and practice empathy.

The Every 28 Hours Plays will trigger some of our most polarized community members into having a reaction before the plays are even produced. Triggered reactions in writing from donors, board, or community indicate a passionate base that can and should be engaged with. We have found that transforming these knee-jerk reactions into dialoguehas strengthened individuals’ connections to our organization. Providing context for the event and partneringwith non-arts community organizations, with the aim of allowing multiple perspectives to be voiced and heard, is key to the start of a productive community dialogue around these themes. We have craftied relationships and materials to help organizations navigate the complicated territory of race, representation, and justice. Please reach out to us if you feel you need support in these areas. To produce a play like Richard III is not to promote murder or hatred or divisiveness, it is simply producing theater inspired by history that allows us to reflect on experiences that are not our own. This piece aims to successfully capture history in the making.