As a daughter whose paternal side has its roots in Meridian, Mississippi and Birmingham, Alabama, my brother and I used to spend our summers with our grandparents down South. Among the water balloon fights with cousins, barbecue, mosquito bites, and sitting on the porch listening to my grandmother as she diligently flapped her church fan emblazoned with the likeness of Dr. King, we would listen as she held court. She spoke of an Irishman named Caldwell, who came to the states during the famine, and “took up” with Gullah-Geechee woman by the name of “Pinky” who would be my great grandmother. I delighted in these stories, tales of survival and resilience as a mixed-race couple during segregation and lynching in the Jim Crow South. It was on these operatic cicada laden evenings that I learned the power of testimony- both individually and collectively. 

That is the world from which playwright Isaiah Reaves has emerged to create the hip-hop confluence that is Lil’ G. At the mere age of twenty-five years old, Isaiah taps into the ancient whispers of the ancestors, decoding the songs and rituals left to us to decipher from the Middle Passage to a New World, and mixes that cassette tape of event with the classic The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. With one foot in his hometown of Cincinnati, and the other foot steeped in his grandmother’s Creole heritage, Reaves’ Lil’ G is a collision of the time-space continuum, deity-Orishas walking among us, jambalaya-seasoned complication, ring shouts in Congo Square, and unabashed Queer black boy joy. 

I firmly believe that Isaiah has an anointing on his life and its purpose. Lil’ G is a channel for all that has come before. My purpose, as one of his many mentors, has been to continually anchor him in the Aristotelian structure of which he is so fond and make sure that we are first and foremost anchored in a story that must be told with the highest stakes possible. Last year, when we first worked together on his play, Gwenevere, I created a prompt from which I have never wavered, “What do you really want to say, Isaiah? Until the unspeakable can be spoken, nothing else will matter. Once you do, you are free.”  

As we contemplate this factious time of division and political tensions in this state, at this institution and beyond- this production features students who we don’t always see on the Mainstage, yet who are the mainstay of our undergraduate programming. Their talent is staggering, and to be able to provide this opportunity is the blessing of my lifetime. Thank you. 

Spread your wings, Baby Reaves, the world is yours. 

-Ms. Caroline (2023)