My Time in the Room: blk eurydice
Imma find you on the other side
We can take life for another ride
Forever is a river flowing back to who we are
If you missin’ me just listen for the song between the stars– Chorus of “Between the Stars” from blk eurydice
Imma Find You on the Other Side
In 2023, I met Kristiana Rae Colón in a Zoom room. We’d been introduced by Chicago director and performer Ericka Ratcliff, who was then leading Congo Square Theatre, where Kristiana was a long-time collaborator. I run The New Harmony Project, a national new play incubator based in Indianapolis. Our annual ten-day Writers’ Residency in the southern Indiana town of New Harmony offers a restorative and inspirational opportunity for writers, and I was hoping that Ericka might suggest someone who had a script we could develop in partnership with Congo Square.
I left that Zoom meeting knowing that wherever Kristiana Rae Colón goes, she goes with integrity, poetry, and a bit of a wink in her eye…Kristiana didn’t have a script yet: what she had was an incredible concept inspired by the 1959 film Black Orpheus and her new life in New Orleans. She’d focus the story on Cypress, a female Orpheus character, and set it during New Orleans’s Carnival. Neither Kristiana nor Ericka knew that the Orpheus and Eurydice myth is my favorite of all of the Greek stories, but that wasn’t what made me want to support Kristiana—it was the way this project felt inevitable, fated. Kristiana had been slowly willing this story into existence, and it was going to happen. But she needed time and space to dream and write. And, as Fate would have it, that’s what we had to offer.
So we agreed to a two-year partnership: in 2024, Kristiana would spend ten days in pastoral New Harmony, Indiana (a far cry from either Chicago or New Orleans!) writing a play with music. And we planned for a workshop during our 2025 residency. But you know how it goes – the best laid plans…
We Can Take Life for Another Ride
2025 brought a series of surprises related to this project. The first was that it was going to take more time to write this play because Kristiana was kind of living it. She was meeting some of the people she’d hoped to create characters based on. She was looking for a musical collaborator by participating in community events and hosting them in her own backyard. She was writing a story that was more and more personal, and that kind of writing takes time.
The other surprise was a major upset in the Chicago theatre community, which meant that Congo Square would no longer be a feasible partner. Here’s where Fate stepped back in. Court Theatre had a secret wish to support a project by Kristiana Rae Colón, and somehow, Ericka Ratcliff knew that. So once again, Ericka set up a Zoom meeting for me to meet an important collaborator.
If you haven’t met Gabby Randle-Bent, Court’s Senior Artistic Producer, it’s because she’s in several places at once, uplifting and supporting the development of bold new ideas in the theatre, connecting Court to its academic community and its neighborhood, and the history of both. Like a lot of theatre leaders, she’s got her hands full. But she made time for this conversation, and she heard Ericka and I saying that we wanted to find some way to honor the commitment we’d made to Kristiana to nurture her work.
I could offer space and time for writing again in New Harmony, and I was determined to support Kristiana’s collaboration with a musician. But my very small organization didn’t have the capacity to support a workshop outside of our residency program. Court had time and space in August, and the right amount of funding to put towards actors for a workshop. This would be a new partnership, and an exciting opportunity for Kristiana and the play.
Forever is a River Flowing Back to Who We Are
Fast forward a few months, and Kristiana introduces me to Gladney, Grammy-nominated saxophone player and her new musical collaborator. She and Gladney arrive in New Harmony with a few songs already drafted and more on the way. We set up our keyboard in an old train depot, and Gladney brings his sax. Kristiana holds a closed reading of some of the pages, with other writers at the residency serving as her actors, in an old church in town. The work is private, but Kristiana and Gladney know what they’re about. There are flies in the depot (it’s a creaky old building), so we help them find other spaces to work. My staff and community members start humming overheard melodies. Gladney shares the music of New Orleans at an evening salon, and the whole community sings along, loudly. And the residency ends on a high note.
If You Missin’ Me Just Listen for the Song Between the Stars
I show up in Chicago on the fourth day of the workshop, which Gabby is directing. I don’t have an actual role there—I’m just there to support. There’s deep work happening—changing the chorus of a song from a minor key to a major key, which makes the song more hopeful, less mournful. And it’s clear to me that this is how this project always needed to be supported. With breath, with time, with flexibility and intention. There’s an invited reading the next day, of this play that hasn’t found its ending yet, but is about life and death and the immortality of love, and the joy and heart and tradition that makes up New Orleans. Does the mythical Eurydice have to die, Kristiana asks? What does it mean to tell this story now, in 2025 New Orleans? And if Orpheus is a woman, does that change the whole story, and maybe even its ending?
I don’t have the answers, but I know that Kristiana will find them, as she and Gladney continue working. I also know that the Fate that brought The New Harmony Project and Court Theatre together isn’t quite done with us. We’ll be seeing more of each other.