Is God Is (Soho Rep Special Edition)

Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award from the American Playwriting Foundation & Winner of a 2018 Obie Award for Playwriting Soho Rep Special Edition.

Introduction by Dawn Lundy Martin.

Blending epic tragedy, the Spaghetti Western, hip-hop and Afropunk, Is God Is is a revenge tale about twin sisters. In this award-winning work by playwright Aleshea Harris, emotions are laid bare through dialogue and visual gaps in language.

PRAISE

"Step aside, Quentin Tarantino and Martin McDonagh, and all you other macho purveyors of mutilation and mayhem with a smile. A snarly new master of high- octane carnage has risen into view."--The New York Times

"A rigorous new work that unearths our deepest fears about humanity and who we think we are in relation to ourselves and the divine."--Dawn Lundy Martin

"Family, as the old tragedians knew, is our first country. Therefore, it's the earth from which we forge our first weapons, the fields of our first wars, the very turf over which we fight. With Is God Is, Aleshea Harris audaciously scours tragedy down with the rough edge of a rock. To read this merciless play is to get blood in your eye--and in Harris' sure grip, you'll recall that blood washes and stains, can run hot or cold, means both violence and family."--Douglas Kearney

Drama. Poetry. Performance Studies. African & African American Studies. California Interest. Hybrid Genre.

Aleshea Harris's epic western revenge play IS GOD IS (world premiere directed by Taibi Magar at Soho Rep) won the 2016 Relentless Award, an OBIE award for playwriting, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. What to Send Up When It Goes Down, a ritualized response to anti- blackness, had its critically-acclaimed NYC premier (dir. Whitney White, produced by The Movement Theatre Company), then toured D.C. and Boston in fall of 2019, was featured in American Theatre Magazine's April '19 issue and won a rare Special Commendation from the 2020 Blackburn Prize. Harris was awarded the Next Step Award from Samuel French and is a recipient of the 2020 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the 2020 Mimi Steinberg Playwriting Award, and the 2021 Hermitage Greenfield Prize.