for Elijah

Such a year! A constant state of change. Among those changes, loss.

Mourning does the hard work of engaging with emptiness as a creative space, a cleared area where hope wrestles with grief, where grief and hope learn from each other, learn habit and gain strength in engagement with each other’s body.

As a social act of mourning and strange, strong hope, there’s this: Looking to gather a thousand plays in a thousand hours to celebrate what would have been Elijah McClain’s birthday, February 25, 2021.

Playwrights to write 10 plays each, in praise of Elijah’s birth. Each play is 25 words long (including title, character names, stage directions). A play is a script, but also – a play in the sports sense: a consolidated, directed action… It could take the form of free language, a drawing or drawings, a move or moves.

Why 25 words? Because they are too few. And remembering Elijah is necessary but small against the tide. Why 10, why 100, why 1000? Because they are too many, too much. Elijah is so vast; the movement to hope requires great expansion of the heart’s faith in the future.