Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      Production Credits

      Characters

      Author’s Notes

       Act One

       Act Two

       Back Cover

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Pass Over was developed over a period of nearly five years. I am deeply grateful to the following people and institutions:

      My many hundreds of students at the Borough of Manhattan Community College for keeping me on my toes, making me a better instructor, and reminding me what beautiful language sounds like.

      Evan Cabnet, André Bishop, and LCT3; Anna Shapiro, David Schmitz, Aaron Carter, and Steppenwolf; Angelina Fiordellisi, Janio Marrero, Seri Lawrence, Katori Hall, and The Cherry Lane Mentor Project; Michael Walkup, Rachel Karpf Reidy, and P73; Jonathan McCrory and The National Black Theatre; and Shawn Rene Graham and Playwrights’ Playground at The Classical Theater of Harlem.

      Spike Lee, who read the play, saw its urgency, and preserved it on film so that people who don’t go to the theater can share in its wonder.

      Ted Hope, Scott Foundas, and Amazon Studios for giving this story such a readily accessible platform on Amazon Prime.

      All the generous and talented directors and actors who enabled development of the piece along the way: Tea Alagic, Victor Maog, and LA Williams. Also Julian Parker, Ryan Hallahan, Jaime Lincoln Smith, Eden Marryshow, Joe Tapper, RJ Brown, Frank Harts, Jeff Biehl, Ruffin Prentiss, Khiry Walker, Carl Hendrick Louis, Bill Johnson, and Malik Ali.

      And especially Jon Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood, and Gabe Ebert, whose finesse, urgency, and professionalism made me a better writer.

      To my great and good collaborator, Danya Taymor, who said yes to this wild ride without hesitation, jumped in heart-plus-brain first, and made the play sing.

      And last but not least, thank you to Graham, my lover, husband, and friend. When I’m at my lowest and worst, you believe in the work I’m doing, and even more in me. I love you.

       INTRODUCTION

      I want this introduction to be a record of the process, oftentimes uncertain and serpentine, that resulted in the birthing of this play. I was skittish and impatient when I began writing this play, but possessed of an emotion so unsettling in its demands for acknowledgement, for action, that I had no choice but to embark.

      I began writing Pass Over at the end of 2013 and completed a first draft by the summer of 2014. The first few months were tumultuous: a while earlier I had endured a developmental process for another play that left me brittle, untrusting, and creatively empty. After that play was over, I wrote a few ten-minute plays, including Vanna White Has Got to Die, which was produced in the Obie Award-winning Fire This Time’s Annual Ten Minute Festival, but it took great effort and concentration to feel something other than resentment and anguish at the prospect of setting my hand to the work of writing another full-length play.

      I knew at the outset that this play would concern a river crossing of some kind. I began by researching the routes that enslaved black people—my ancestors—took during the antebellum era, and became fascinated with stories centering around the Ohio River. I scoured ship manifests for names and very nearly decided to name my protagonist Prince, until a pair of names, Moses and Kitch, caught my attention, mostly because of the conflicts integral to their pairing. What must it have been like for an enslaved man to bear the name of a biblical patriarch who was himself born a prince and empowered to lead his people to freedom? And the name Kitch, a seemingly incomplete word whose sound arrested the breath when spoken aloud. These were