What I’m excited about and learning from by Casey Llewellyn

Inspiring opportunities to support Black and Indigenous self-determination

Reparations Summer! Support this land-based movement for Black liberation!

The Southern Power Fund! Support a collaboration of southern Black-led movement organizations to redistribute 10 million dollars to southern grassroots progressive organizing.

NDN Collective! Support this Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change.

Seeding Sovereignty! Support this Indigenous-led collective, working to shift social and environmental paradigms by dismantling colonial institutions and replacing them with Indigenous practices created in synchronicity with the land.

Books

Beyond Survival by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha - We are all called to become more skilled at addressing violence and abuse in our communities without police and the criminal justice system. This book is a huge resource of writing from people who have been doing that for years. In this moment where it is more clear than ever that we must end of the culture of abuse including abuse from police and in the criminal justice system, this book is so necessary, I literally could not put it down.

Just Us by Claudia Rankine - This gorgeous genre-defying book explores poetically the many ways white supremacy permeates the words and actions of white people in the U.S. regardless of their/our intentions and how we might change in our conversations toward undoing the hold it has on all of us.

In The Wake by Christina Sharpe - This book is deep poetic witnessing of Black existence “in the wake” of slavery. It is a sacred act of care and love. Sharpe’s attention to the relentless violence on many levels toward Black bodies and the unfurling of its impact and exploration of the work of Black writers and artists reckoning with this helped me understand anti-Blackness on a more embodied level.

Videos

Learn about abolition with Critical Resistance!

This webinar by leaders in the movement for abolition taught me so much!

Patrisse Cullors-Brignac’s Daily Digest on IGTV

Keep yourself informed about International, National, and Local (in California) politics and take action with one of this country’s most impactful and visionary organizers, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, and an artist.

Podcasts

How To Survive the End of the World podcast

Deepen your skills for caring for yourself and your community with the deep and wise Brown sisters (Autumn and adrienne maree) who are writers, organizers, healers, facilitators, and movement strategists as they interview the experts whose knowledge we need to survive apocalypse.

Lady Don’t Take No podcast

Learn from movement leader and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Alicia Garza and her community in this fun, real, and deep podcast with brilliant guests changing our world.

Help by Claudia Rankine at The Shed, March 10-April 5th! by Casey Llewellyn

HELP-Hcard (2).jpg

I thrilled to be working as a dramaturg with poet and playwright Claudia Rankine on her new play HELP, which runs at The Shed March 10-April 5. The whole team is super talented and amazing!! Director Taibi Magar, actress Roslyn Ruff, choreographer Shamel Pitts, set designer Mimi Lien, composer Jerome Ellis, costume designer Dede Ayite, and sound designer Mikaal Sulaiman. I feel so grateful to be in the room everyday!

This show is unlike anything I have ever worked on our heard about and will be SO POWERFUL.

Get your tickets here!

From The Shed:

“I write to provoke dialogue and to transform how we think about what it means to live and breathe in the world.”

—Claudia Rankine

Acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine (Citizen: An American LyricThe White Card) examines the nature of white male privilege in Help, a powerful new play commissioned by The Shed.

Roslyn Ruff (Theater: Fairview; Film: Marriage Story; TV: DivorcePose) stars as the Narrator, who recounts Rankine’s real-life conversations with white men that take place in transitional spaces like airports. As the stories unfold through monologues and staged scenarios, with Ruff supported by a cast of white male actors and dancers, Help explores how these conversations can go right, wrong, or raise new questions.

Directed by Obie Award-winner Taibi Magar (Is God Is, Soho Rep), Help builds on Rankine’s ongoing investigation into whiteness, elements of which were shared in her recent, widely read New York Times Magazine essay, “I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.”

Rankine’s body of work, for which she has been awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, crosses lyric poetry and prose essay to navigate questions of race, healthcare, loneliness, and what it means for a life to matter in American society today.

Recommended for ages 14 and up; includes adult language and content around white supremacy, racism, and misogyny

Play in She Persists at Pillsbury House & Theatre, March 13th-24th by Casey Llewellyn

Sara Richardson, Ashawnti Ford, Nora Montañez Patterson & Audrey Park, cast of She Persists: An All-Woman Take on the Political Divide at Pillsbury House & Theatre. Photo by Rich Ryan.

Sara Richardson, Ashawnti Ford, Nora Montañez Patterson & Audrey Park, cast of She Persists: An All-Woman Take on the Political Divide at Pillsbury House & Theatre. Photo by Rich Ryan.

I was commissioned by one of my favorite Minneapolis theaters, Pillsbury House & Theatre, to write a short play for She Persists: An All-Woman Take on the Political Divide, along with co-Jerome fellow Philana Imade Omorotionmwan and great writers, Cristina Florencia Castro, Oya Mae Duchess-Davis & Aameera Siddiqui.

I wrote a play called The Team about the heartbreak of failed solidarity among women and how progressive white women must transform ourselves to move into the future we want. You know just a light electoral politics play featuring Elizabeth Warren.

The plays are directed by Noël Raymond with music by Queen Drea. The cast (pictured above) is also amazing!

From Pillsbury House & Theatre:

She Persists is a fresh take on the conversation that began with the popular 2017 production, The Great Divide: Plays for a Broken Nation and continued with 2018’s The Great Divide: Plays on the Politics of TruthFeaturing an all-woman cast, production team and playwright cohortShe Persists: The Great Divide III is a powerful, intersectional look at the place where womanhood and politics collide.”

Come see the plays! They will be up at Pillsbury House & Theatre Wednesday the 13th-24th. Tickets are pay-what-you-can $5-25!

End of Year Gift & Giving Ideas by Casey Llewellyn

December is hard

It helps me to channel my feelings of fear, paranoia, and sense of doom about the state of the world into efforts to change things in material ways toward the creation of a healthier, safer, more just world for everyone. If you’re looking for ideas of what to support this December and/or what read and give to your people, some of my favorites are below.

Support social change!

CJI (The Criminal Justice Initiative) — CJI is an activist-led fund that support grassroots organizing led by people directly impacted by the criminal justice and immigration detention systems in the U.S. I’ve been involved with CJI for 8 years and was on staff for 4, and I can personally attest to the transformative power of the work they support to create justice and safety all across the country.

Trans Justice Funding Project — Trans Justice Funding Project is a trans-led fund that convenes a panel of trans activists from regions all across the country each year to make grants to grassroots organizations led by trans people. Like CJI, TJFP often funds organizations before they have received institutional support from other sources and is transforming the landscape of safety and justice for trans people nationally.

Movement for Black Lives Action Fund — The Movement for Black Lives is a collaboration of organizations, individuals and networks “focused on a hopeful and inclusive vision of Black joy, safety and prosperity. That means freedom from violence and economic inequality, as well as the freedom to realize our greatest dreams.” With their policy platform M4BL is transforming the vision, discourse, and the landscape of work toward racial, economic and gender justice in the U.S. and internationally. The M4BL Action Fund is managed by The Movement for Black Lives Resource Table, which is a collaboration of activists and organizers in M4BL.

Movement Voter Project — Something that’s been really exciting to me in the last few years is the increasing connection between grassroots movements for social justice and electoral strategy. Movement Voter Project supports local grassroots organizations for whom get out the vote work is part of their strategy and how they build their base. Then unlike election campaign staff these organizations remain on the ground to hold elected officials accountable. Check out their browse all groups function to support elections in your area and/or around issues you care about, or donate without restrictions to make sure your donation goes where its most needed. Currently, MVP is supporting organizations registering voters for the 2020 elections!

Global Action Project — Global Action Project provides free after school programs for youth in New York City in which they make media that makes a difference in their communities. Their amazing videos are a testament to the brilliant young they support to tell “innovative stories that promote and amplify movements for social justice from low-income, new immigrant, TGNC (trans and gender non-conforming) and LGBQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Queer) communities.”

The Racial Imaginary Institute — The Racial Imaginary Institute is continues to play an important role in shifting the national conversation among artists, institutions, and art goers toward more honest and revelatory conversations about race. Programming to change the way we see and understand race continues! And TRII just received a $15,000 matching grant offer from a generous donor. Donate by March 1st to double the impact of your donation!

Books that have changed my life

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

In this book, author, activist, and facilitator adrienne maree brown is inspired by nature and brings her awe of natural shapes and processes to thought about social justice movements. She encourages us all to find a way to contribute to the creation of the world we want to see starting in small ways that allow us to make the contribution that we uniquely want to and are positioned to make. This book inspired me to more deeply commit myself to supporting movements for social change while pursuing my own pleasure and aliveness. Transformative.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

This book is so important for white people to read! It is an easy read and provides a lot of straight-forward ideas about how to respond differently in conversations about race that are essential to acting against white supremacy in our daily lives. DiAngelo breaks it down. I learned so much! It immediate gave me more clarity on how I have felt and acted in conversations in which I enacted white supremacy without knowing it. If you’re interested in being an actual good ally, read this book!

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

We are destroying the earth as if we are not part of it. In Braiding Sweetgrass, author Robin Wall Kimmerer, a scientist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, offers deeply necessary wisdom toward healing our relationship with nature. I listened to her read it aloud, and it has changed the way I think about being a being and in relationship to plants and animals and the earth.

And a podcast!

I’ve loved listening to the Scene on Radio Podcast’s Seeing White series. And it’s been teaching me a lot! It’s a great way to balance out what you learned in history class and build your critical thinking about race muscles.

Jerome Fellowship at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis! by Casey Llewellyn

Obsessed with my co-fellows: Marvin González de León, me, Haygen-Brice Walker, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, Philana Imade Omorotionmwan

Obsessed with my co-fellows: Marvin González de León, me, Haygen-Brice Walker, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, Philana Imade Omorotionmwan

OMG so thrilled to be in Minneapolis on a Jerome Fellowship at The Playwrights’ Center with amazing co-fellows Marvin González de León, Philana Imade Omorotionmwan, Haygen-Brice Walker & Sofya Levitsky-Weitz. I am learning so much about playwriting and friendship with these amazing writers. Also, The Playwrights’ Center is such an incredible, deep, ethical institution. I am so excited to be be able to learn from the amazing staff there and all the other writers involved. I’ll be developing my new play Foundation in a reading and a workshop there in 2019.

Speaking with Claudia Rankine on Tuesday: Writing for the Stage while Navigating Whiteness by Casey Llewellyn

UPDATE: Talk today is cancelled due to weather. Stay tuned for reschedulement!

Claudia Rankine and I will having a conversation about "Writing for the Stage while Navigating Whiteness" at 6pm Tuesday, March 14th at The Kitchen as part of Half Straddle: Here I Go, pt. 2 of You a series of talks, programming, and an installation curated by Tina Satter. It's free. Come see us. 

Featured in Necessary Exposure! by Casey Llewellyn

The quote below my photo in the gallery: “I am staging the worlds I want to inhabit.”

The quote below my photo in the gallery: “I am staging the worlds I want to inhabit.”

I'm featured along a lot of great playwrights in Jody Christopherson's photography and sound project, Necessary Exposure: The Female Playwright Project. Ren Evans and I read an excerpt from O, Earth and Jody took my picture in Prospect Park! I went to the opening at Dixon Place, and it was interesting and great to hear plays as an audio experience. Hopefully the absence of staging of the voices of female playwrights that Jody is calling attention to with this project will not be one soon. 

You can listen to the excerpt here