Produce

Kelundra Smith-photo by Jerry Siegel

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.

Productions & Updates

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 will have its world premiere in a co-production in 2024. It will be performed at Synchronicity Theatre, June 9-30 and Impact Theatre, July 10-28. The play had aworkshop 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. Learn more.

Younger was accepted into the annual 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. 

I am part of the inaugural cohort of the New Georgia Woman Project: Black Women Speak, 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 Plays

Younger

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?

Other Paths to God

Mystery/Dark Comedy. 4W 1NB. Renee buries herself in work; Coleen cheated on her husband; Rel isn’t speaking to their father; Kai struggles to find her away; and Amy is trying to keep the lid on a scandal that’s about to erupt at Morey Medical Center. In the midst of a global pandemic, a group of nurses find themselves at a spiritual crossroads. Can these women come together to free each other, or will they be swallowed by a system that’s looking for someone to blame?

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.  

The Wash

Comedy. 7W. In 1881, Black laundresses in Atlanta led a strike weeks before the International Cotton Exposition came to town. Demanding $1/week, the Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike of 1881 was the first successful interracial, organized labor strike of the post-Civil War era. The Wash offers an intimate and often funny look at ordinary women who went from workers to fighters– and won. 
 

The Vote 

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. 

The Knot

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).