←Recommendations of #NewSlaves

This astounding play is as epic in scope as it is intimate. It manages to illuminate the lives of several individuals--historical and contemporary--with deft and multi-faceted brushstrokes while also zooming out and illuminating several harmful systems the United States was built on and runs on: the enslavement of Black people, policing and incarceration, and professional sports. The links it makes between those three oppressive structures are potent and bold and startling while also being tackled in a nuanced manner. A huge, theatrical masterpiece that threads important connections and provokes necessary conversations.

This play is a massive achievement that needs to be produced EVERYWHERE.

The level of vision and craft here is astounding. The play ties threads from the past to the present -- using the choreography of bodies as well as characters speaking to each other through time (and clever "time out" asides) -- that make the work's scope some of the greatest in magnitude that I've encountered while also delicately and precisely allowing its web of characters to be depicted in an intimate and multifaceted manner. The dialogue is fantastic, the characters are complicated, and its ideas about legacy sharply drawn. A tour-de-force!

I saw a reading of this play in 2017 at the Classical Theatre of Harlem and again in 2019 at The Playwrights Realm. Keelay seamlessly draws the nexus between our relationship to the institution of slavery and one of America's more beloved sports without ever compromising the theatricality, the heart, and the truth of the people in this world. This play is promised to be one of the more daring contributions to the American Theatre in a long time.

I don't know if anyone can measure up to the swagger that Keelay brings to his writing. While the play is certainly a fantasia, it's still so grounded in characters that are flesh and blood. It's ferocious, smart, and it's forcing it's audience to confront how we all contribute to the structures that contain to oppress black Americans. Adore this play.

Saw this new work at Victory Gardens' Ignition Festival. An unflinching, movement-based, epic piece of writing, mixing and mangling realistic, down-to-earth drama with stylized imagery, the melding of history-hopping scenes, fourth-wall-breaking meta-commentary, and so much more. A sprawling, necessary drama connecting the dots between slavery and sports through emotionally resonant means. Truly loved this one.

I appreciated how Mr. Gipson interspersed his pop culture, NFL-world with symbolist surrealism. There are subterranean elements stirring at all times! There’s an amazing line late in the script: “You want to know what America really thinks about Black people. Get a bunch of White Men in a room alone — That’s America.” That quality of unnerving, stark honesty is the DNA of this epic script.

A terrific play.

It is the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's pleasure to recommend Keelay Gipson and their play #NewSlaves as a finalist for our 2018 National Playwrights Conference. The play rose through a competitive, anonymous, multileveled selection process that took nearly nine months to execute. As one of 53 finalists out of more than 1,420 submissions, the strength of its writing has allowed this work to prosper in such a competitive selection process.