themes
Race
Racism
Reckoning
closed February 2019
“What would be the impact if all black people disappeared?”
In February 2019, we put on Day of Absence, the landmark 1965 play that launched the founding of the Negro Ensemble Company. It was first presented on Nov. 15, 1965, at St. Marks Playhouse on a double bill with Ward's one-act satire, Happy Ending (which is also worth checking out).
In Day of Absence, the white residents of a small, fictional town in the South wake to find all the Black people have disappeared. As shoes go unshined and babies unfed, the municipality devolves into chaos.
This groundbreaking work uses caustic humor to shed light on the critical roles African-Americans play in society in a message that, sadly, is a relevant and necessary today as it was when it was first performed.
““Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.....”
” Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society. ”