Kirsten Greenidge on her new play Baltimore
by Denae Wilkins (COM’18)
Few things are more intimate than meeting an artist for the first time and quizzing them about their art. But playwriting professor Kirsten Greenidge sat across from me at the round table in her office and readily opened up to me about her journey of becoming a playwright. “I’ve always been a little dramatic,” Greenidge explains. She goes on to tell me about how she spent her childhood years, spearheading the theater company she created with her sister and neighborhood friends. Their main performance space being her parent’s living room. “Children we liked and who were nice to us got big speaking roles. Those who were rude to us at any point were things like rocks and trees.” Greenidge admits she has grown a lot since those neighborhood productions, and adds, “I am now a much more collaborative artist, I hope.”
Before coming to BU in 2012, Greenidge taught playwriting at the University of Iowa, where she received an MFA in Playwriting in 2001. She also taught at both the Boston and Cambridge Centers for Adult Education. The biggest difference between her experiences at those institutions versus BU is the time she got to spend with her students. As she explained to me, “It was a wonderful experience, but I met with students for 6 weeks, and then they were gone. I still kept in touch with them, but it wasn’t the same. Here, I get to know a student’s writing over the course of a few years.” During her time at CFA, she has taught students who are strong writers and very determined playwrights, and students who at some point unintentionally stumbled upon the playwriting track.
Greenidge herself discovered she wanted to be a playwright in the 7th grade. It was August Wilson’s performance of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Huntington Theatre Company that made Greenidge want to become a playwright in earnest. “It was the first time I saw black people on stage who weren’t in a musical,” she explains. “I had never seen a straight play featuring black people telling a story. I loved it.” Yet, her moment of enlightenment left her with a singular question: Was it possible for her to become a playwright as a black woman? Despite attending a school where all of her teachers encouraged her to become a writer, and having parents who encouraged her interest in writing as well, Greenidge felt pushback from the rest of the world.
Somewhat defeated, she kept her dream of becoming a playwright to herself until a teacher at Arlington High School reignited her love for writing plays. Despite that, Greenidge attended Wesleyan University as a U.S. History major with a concentration in the antebellum period. Yet, it was also in college that she took her first playwriting course, and once she found her way back to playwriting, she began taking as many playwriting and theater courses as she could before she graduated.
Greenidge’s skills as a writer and educator have not only touched Boston University classrooms, but will now be felt on BU’s stage. Baltimore, her latest play, will premiere this February as a joint production of New Repertory Theatre and Boston Center for American Performance through the Boston University New Play Initiative. Commissioned for the Big Ten Consortium in 2014, there were limitations to which Greenidge had to adhere when writing the play. The commission stipulated that a minimum of six female roles be included, and the play had to tackle an issue that was pressing for the school the playwright was commissioned from, Greenidge’s alma mater, the University of Iowa. As happens so often, the most pressing issue at the time was race.
Baltimore centers around a racially charged experience involving an RA and the students that live on her floor. After Shelby Wilson is let go from her position in the athletics department, she becomes a Resident Advisor to a group of freshmen. The inciting action of the play pins one student against another, and it is up to Shelby to mediate the situation. Baltimore explores the complexities of racism from the perspective of eight racially diverse college students.
The name of the show was inspired by Incident, a poem by Countee Cullen, but Greenidge says Baltimore became timelier when the brutality cases in Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, MD, and New York City erupted. As a result, a unique aspect of Greenidge’s play is the production’s constant need to change depending on the current cultural climate. Currently, Greenidge is trying to answer the question: “How will present-day race relations shape the audience’s perception of this play?”
“I write about race a lot,” Greenidge affirms as our interview comes to a close. “I’ve watched movies and TV shows where there were only one or two black people in the cast, and it wasn’t until I saw August Wilson’s play that I saw black people shown with dignity.” It goes without saying that race has historically been a taboo topic of conversation, but for Greenidge, it is necessary that we speak about it. Especially given the current climate of racial tension in the U.S.
Prepare to be entertained by Baltimore, but also informed. Greenidge’s hope for this play is that it stimulates, but does not aggravate the audience. That her words will provoke questions, but not necessarily answer them, and that the audience leaves with a desire to go out and find those answers for themselves.
For more information about show dates and tickets, visit bostontheatrescene.com.
Denae Wilkins is a sophomore Public Relations major in the College of Communication. Denae is currently working with the College of Fine Arts Department of Communications as a Public Relations Assistant. She is an active member of an array of organizations on campus including The Callbacks, BU’s sketch and improv comedy group, BU Culture Shock, an online publication funded by the Howard Thurman Center, and WTBU, BU’s radio station.