Writing is my first love and theater is a close second. I’ve spent more weekends than I can count sharing stories in the dark with strangers. My vision is for the stories that come through me to invoke empathy, ignite curiosity, encourage critical thinking, and open the hearts of people around the world.
Imagining a vibrant future for Black people and other people of color is central to my work, because our best days are before us. Read my full artist statement.
The Wash is officially the recipient of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. The play is being co-produced by Synchronicity Theatre, June 7-30 and Impact Theatre, July 10-28. It will then go to The Black Rep in St. Louis and then to a co-production with Prop Thtr and Perceptions Theatre in Chicago. The play had a workshop on April 1, 2023 in Atlanta. It also had a reading as a part of a partnership between Hush Harbor Lab and Essential Theatre, Aug. 18, 2022. Here’s what the press has to say:
Drama. 4W, 3M. In this imagined prequel to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, we journey with the Younger family matriarch, Lena, from Jackson, Mississippi to Chicago during the Great Migration. When she reunites with Walter, Sr., she finds that life in the North is not as they thought it would be. Will they be able to hold steadfast to their dreams and each other, or will the harsh realities of a new place get the best of them?
Younger was accepted into the 2023 Flint Repertory Theatre New Works Festival, which was held in Flint, Michigan from April 28-May 1, 2023. It had a reading at Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre in Atlanta, Feb. 18-20, 2022. Listen to my interview on NPR station WABE about the show.
Mystery/Dark Comedy. 4W 1NB. When I started writing this play I said I wanted it to feel like an episode of “Scandal.” A group of ICU nurses find themselves becoming the scapegoats when grant money goes missing at Morey Medical Center. Will they come together to free each other, or will they be swallowed by a system that’s looking for someone to blame? It’s a wild ride.
This play was commissioned as a part of the New Georgia Woman Project: Black Women Speak initiative, sponsored by Horizon Theatre Company and the National New Play Network. The program aims to develop new plays by nine Black women playwrights in the South. Public readings will be held in 2024.
THE RECONSTRUCTION TRILOGY
The Reconstruction Trilogy consists of three plays set in post-Civil War Georgia. The plays explore the three areas that freed Black people nurtured in order to establish community after Emancipation: the family, sovereignty and economic mobility.
Drama. 5W, 7M. Reverend Campbell McNeal is in the fight of his life, running for a Senate seat in Georgia’s first state legislature since before the Civil War. President Grant has sent an ambitious group of men from the North to help with his election, but a mysterious young woman may be the opponent he never saw coming. Loosely based on the real lives of Tunis Campbell and Henry McNeal Turner, this new drama shows the real cost of the vote.
Romantic Comedy. 2M, 2W. What does it mean to love someone without bondage and obligation? After leaving their plantation, Flex and CeCe settle in a community of free Black people in South Georgia. With the world at their fingertips, they must decide whether they still want each other on this side of freedom.
I’m the only Kelundra I know, so if you’ve accidentally stumbled upon this page, it’s fate (and I have no idea what word you were trying to type in your search engine).