Cover Artwork of The Call and Response Issue: an illustration of people marching
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Find The Universal... And Then Kill It Dead.
Black beautiful woman's hand sculpture isolated on yellow background

What white folks say: “I know you wrote the play with Black characters, but it’s so universal, so relatable.”

What I hear: “Wow, I didn’t know that Black people are actually people.”

This shit makes me a little crazy. Truly. It induces two conflicting feelings:

On the one hand, part of the reason I got into playwriting is to create bridges between underrepresented people like me and the mainstream. So, I guess when people tell me that they can relate to my characters despite not being Black or a woman or queer or fill-in-the-blank other, it’s a type of success.

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Chisa Hutchinson
Chisa Hutchinson

has written a bunch of plays, most recently a radio drama called Redeemed that you can listen to on Apple Podcasts (hint-hint). She’s won a bunch of awards and all that’s cool and good, but mostly she just wants to figure out how to cure racism with words. www.chisahutchinson.com