Caitlin Frazier

The Time: Black History Month 2026

The Place: My mind

This Black History Month, I cataloged my personal history by writing a play a day for 28 days. This play is the culmination of 28 days of work and 28 days of things that shouldn’t have happened during Black History Month.

Good luck! Have fun on the wild ride!

In Aurora, Colorado, suburbia is turned upside down. Dawn, the white-woman queen of her suburban lawn, is trapped in her house. She can talk to Anthony, her husband, she can talk to her patch of green, her lawn, and she can also see, speak to, and respond to her audience. This is sometimes a lively part of her life, but most of the time it burdens Dawn, as she often must “please” her viewers, waiting for real audience approval and engagement throughout the play.

On one seemingly normal day, Dawn receives a visitor, a Black woman named Joan whose encounter with the lawn becomes contentious as she waits for the city bus. This chance (or miraculously planned) encounter leads to a tenuous friendship between the two women, as Dawn begins to welcome Joan more and more into her domestic space. The women and Anthony sit down for a dinner that culminates in Joan becoming stuck, as she accidentally slips into the routines of the housewife.

With Joan also stuck in the house, Dawn begins to plot the women’s escape. She remembers another woman who escaped this sort of suburban purgatory, her childhood friend Taylor, and rehearses related memories, with Joan as Taylor. Walking through this past allows Dawn to see a way out—and that the way out can only be accessed by one person. Using this knowledge, Dawn leaves, and she leaves Joan in her place. As the play continues, the audience becomes a character and perpetrator in the trap; they “like” Joan, and she assumes the role of the housewife and the entertainer.

Jane is a writer without content, and Dylan has a story to tell. In this new play about the ethics of writing, a young queer couple navigates the beginning of a relationship in which one partner's childhood secret could jumpstart the other's career. Re: Writing is a one-act play about the ethics of storytelling. Its two characters embark on a burgeoning romantic relationship, complete with imagined futures and confessions about the past, as they negotiate their complicated relationships with words, communication, and writing. The play’s central concern/question -- who gets to tell your story and how -- shapes their relationship, but the play also becomes a story about trust, evoking that trust, and trusting another person to represent you.