Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – francisca da silveira’s terrifically acted if uneven new play MINOR·ITY expounds on what it means to be a Black artist

• By drediman
• April 15, 2025
• No Comments

Last night, francisca da silveira’s minor•ity opened Off-Broadway in a co-production between WP Theater and Colt Coeur. In short, the fascinating new play is told from the perspectives of three Black artists — each representing different points of view regarding how to navigate their art in a system that’s largely designed to tokenize and set off competition amongst them — who convene to partake in Diaspora Now!, a fictitious international African arts conference that’s celebrating its Diamond Jubilee in Paris.

The first two of these Black artists are Céza Depina and Cheikh Malick Diallo, a visual artist and a storyteller — each from Africa and highly accomplished in their respective fields — who share a romantic past. We learn that the strong-willed Céza suffers from artist’s block, which is seemingly connected to her staunch refusal to return to Cabo Verde, despite much of her art being based on her homeland. Cheikh, on the other hand, is more at ease playing the game, shape-shifting his identity in order to succeed as a Black artist (in fact, the play is presented within the framework of a backwards-looking parable from one of his storytelling sessions in Senegal). The third participant we meet is the young, up-and-coming American theater-maker Sami Monroe — a self-professed “director, slash playwright, slash dramaturg, slash intimacy coordinator” — whose idealism throws things off-kilter, particularly when it comes to the messaging of the conference panel discussions, which also substantially function as auditions for funding from a largely White donor base. Although the characters’ numerous cultural, generational, and ideological clashes are often compelling, minor•ity currently lacks a sufficiently defined arc, and the drama starts sagging as a sense repetition creeps in (it would have been vastly illuminating to see how the characters handle the actual panels). Nevertheless, silveira concludes her uneven play strongly with a series of punchy scenes that had me leaning forward to see how she wraps it all up (no spoilers here).

Despite my slight reservations about the play, Shariffa Ali’s confident production does an admirable job of attempting to shape the piece and is especially excellent in the acting department. Indeed, Nedra Marie Taylor (Céza), Nimene Sierra Wureh (Sami), and Ato Essandoh (Cheikh) each give nicely-etched performances that expertly straddle slicing caricature and deep characterization. Particularly captivating is Taylor, whose hardened but commanding Céza ignites the stage with simmering emotion whenever she’s in the room.

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minor•ity
Off-Broadway, Play
WP Theater / Colt Coeur
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through May 4