ML Roberts

Winter on a remote New England island. A Mexican housekeeper waits for her paycheck, as a young Black man arrives for a surprise visit with her employers: a liberal, middle-aged white couple preparing to host a retreat with their spiritual guru. When a national tragedy traps them all together, the couple's estate becomes both shelter and prison in this multilingual horror-comedy.

In this epic triptych, Janelle and Roland Jemisin, a pair of twins orphaned and raised by their uncle from a young age prepare to celebrate their 30th birthdays. But when an act of violence breaks apart the family gathering, the twins discover a long kept family secret: they have superpowers. Meanwhile, a reporter named Whitey McWhiteface works to reclaim her fanbase after a scandal derails her career. With elements of music, magic, humor and danger each of them are forced to confront who they really are and what they can become.

A Black man is dying and he doesn't know it. As he wanders through a snowy tundra, he must relive his past as a means toward love and liberation. Where and how does anyone learn different models of love? What effect does the performance of Black masculinity have on Black men? How does that performance script support/obstruct love scripts? What are the possibilities for transformation within those scripts? Is that a conscious or unconscious process? This memory play deals with the deconstruction of Black masculinity, theatricalizing memory and dream logic, and Judeo-Christian, Inferno-esque spiritual trials/quests.

Five years after their breakup, Reggie, a fast rising, young entrepreneur, reunites with his ex-girlfriend Vera, an older, world famous artist. When Reggie confesses he is still in love with Vera, the two decide to replay their relationship and figure out where things went wrong. A romantic comedy confronting issues of age, race, art, and love.

This history play inspired by Black life in Indianapolis uses music, movement, and poetry to follow the fictional Johnson family across several generations. Beginning in 1821 at a settlement for free people of color, through the industrial revolution and cultural renaissance of the 1920s, to the racial injustices of a segregated Park in the 1960s, the entire story is told through a chorus of "Re-Memberers" who build and inhabit different eras and characters throughout.

Riverside had its world premiere in the summer of 2023 at Indy Shakes, developed in partnership with The New Harmony Project!

A liberatory collective of Black women farmers become abolitionists after kidnapping the abuser of one of their members. Inspired by the work of Mariame Kaba, Mimi Kim and countless Transformative Justice practitioners, this play examines the causes of and efforts to address gendered violence in an imagined community as a means towards modeling alternatives to punitive and carceral systems in our real ones.