Black Matters: Lewis Morrow Plays: Baybra’’s Tulips; Begetters; Motherson

Black Matters: Lewis Morrow Playsis a play anthology that maps the impact of emotional, social, cultural, and economic forces that shape the quality of African American life in the 21st century.

Focusing on the narratives of Black men and women carrying the hopes and dreams of a generation, Morrow writes stories of dreams deferred, lives incarcerated, and families broken by circumstance who strive to beat the stereotypes of Blackness. Bending time to create hyperreal poetic engagements with anti-Blackness and systemic racism, Morrow questions who has the audacity of hope while living within circumstances that anticipate premature death. Morrow’s poignant characters speak truth to power directly from their hearts as they present as unapologetically Black in a world that is indifferent to, and fatigued by, claims of racism and inequality.

Baybra’s Tulips: Baybra, a recently rereleased convict, returns home to live with sister Tallulah and her husband Charles under the pretence of rehabilitation but with the objective to avenge his sister’s spousal abuse by his brother-in-law that resulted in the loss of her child.

Begetters: Explores generational inheritance of trauma focusing on husband and wife, Spicer and Norma, in the twilight years of their marriage, and their descent into darkness and therapy after the loss of a family member

Mother/son: A dark dramedy about a white mother who is in denial about her racist perspective and her cocaine addiction. Forced to get clean, she comes to live with her Black son (mixed race) who is reluctant to invest in her latest efforts to get clean in the converging pandemics of BLM and Cov

Lewis Morrow is a Kansas City, Kansas native actor and playwright. He was named Director of New Play Development at KC MeltingPot Theatre in 2019.

Nicole Hodges Persley is an Associate Professor of American Studies and African American Studies who specializes in areas of Hip-hop Studies, Acting and Directing and African American performance in theater, film and television. An artist-scholar, Hodges Persley creates intentional bridges between the entertainment industry and academia. She is the author of Sampling and Remixing Blackness in Hip Hop Performance, and co-author of Breaking It Down: Auditioning for Artists of the Global Majority.