The first play to open on Broadway in more than a year, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu's Pass Over tells the story of two young Black men dreaming of a better tomorrow in a world of police violence.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Tonight, for the first time in almost 17 months, a new play begins previews on Broadway. Called "Pass Over," it combines elements of existential drama with the Bible as it looks at two young Black men dreaming of a better tomorrow in a world of police violence. Jeff Lunden reports.

JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: Playwright Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu loves mashing things up.

ANTOINETTE CHINONYE NWANDU: As an artist, I'm always looking to remix, collage. I think that is one of the main gestures of the late 20th and early 21st century. I love R&B, I love pop. Nobody's doing anything new. How do we remix it into something that feels right now?

LUNDEN: And "Pass Over" is a play that absolutely feels right now, even though Nwandu began writing it after Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012. Raised in the church and trained in the theater, she came up with her own collage.

NWANDU: And so I'm sitting here as an artist, and I'm saying, on one hand, I've got the Bible. I've got the Exodus story that I love. On the other hand, I've got "Waiting For Godot." The Trayvon Martin case is happening in front of me. As a Black American, do I say, justice is coming, justice is coming, justice is coming or do I say, oh, my God, America is the largest plantation I have ever seen?

LUNDEN: So Nwandu samples liberally from both the Bible and "Waiting For Godot." In that play, two tramps pass time on a blank stage waiting for a character who never comes. "Pass Over's" two central characters, Moses and Kitch, want a better life beyond their street corner but can't pass over. Jon Michael Hill plays Moses.

JON MICHAEL HILL: Why can't these guys leave? I sort of imagine it as a force field of red lining, income inequality, education inequality. What are the options? There aren't. I mean, there's also the policeman who's patrolling the block.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "PASS OVER")

HILL: (As Moses) You gonna (ph) get up off this plantation, get up off this block. Then, we gonna walk - walk right up to that river Jordan. It's gonna be deep. It's gonna be wide. And we gonna stand there like - like chosen, like [expletive] this world ain't never seen.

DANYA TAYMOR: There's this beautiful constant tension in the play. Like, is this guy Moses or is he a guy named Moses?

LUNDEN: Danya Taymor directed "Pass Over" in Chicago, where Spike Lee filmed it, and off-Broadway. Now, she's directing the Broadway version.

TAYMOR: I think when you watch it, you know, until a certain point, you'll have the same question.

LUNDEN: The cast says it was one thing to do the play a few years ago, but now, in the midst of the pandemic and after the death of George Floyd, their perspective has changed. Gabriel Ebert plays two white characters - a racist police officer and a rich man who's wandered onto the block. In previous versions, the rich man kills Moses in the play's final moments.

GABRIEL EBERT: When we were doing it the first time, there seemed to be a sort of shock amongst white Americans, especially liberal progressive white Americans, that, how are these things still happening? And we wanted to wake up the audience. Over the last few years, I think the events that have been captured on camera have woken up the audience.

LUNDEN: And so for the Broadway version, playwright Antoinette Nwandu made the decision to change the play's ending.

NWANDU: I can't make an ending that I can't see in my mind. And while Trump was president and there was no vaccine and George Floyd was being murdered, lynched, I could not see another ending.

LUNDEN: Now, things are different.

NWANDU: Now I can imagine an Afrofuturist ending of my play that exists within the bounds of the world I've already created where this young Black man could actually live.

LUNDEN: For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF TEEN DAZE'S "HIDDEN WORLDS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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