Written by Tom Minter, Scenic design by Adam Easterling, and Directed by Jasmine Mitchell
3 FRAMES / BY ME is curated from the full play BY ME YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, a journey across perspectives of memory, through which the main character, African-American playwright KEN JOHNSON, is challenged to reconcile, as truer journey, discovery of all the “undiscussed” that has shaped choices out of legacy, in order to disentangle conflicting frames of class, caste, and prejudices for all manner of “otherness’”.
The workshopping of this play, across the pandemic hiatus of 2020, has been engagement in an effort to construct ways for the complete work to journey and develop. We’ve engaged with arts entities who are precipitously deep in the challenge of investigating constructs of “the undiscussed”, which have institutional legacy of impact, and form a stream of consequential conduct of disconnect, into unpacking process in judgment, procedure, diversity, and constructs for dialogue.
3 FRAMES / BY ME speaks of an artist’s effort out of constructs that have gone into his making, to accept a meaningful journey threading across the perspectives of others, and ultimately knitting a new landscape for “inwards” that allows space for questions, reflections, and an intentionality in choices ahead.
In the circumstances of opportunity, in this Centennial year of reflection, The Phillips and its Horning Chair of Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion, Makeba Clay, understand the value of this conversation — not just in an artist’s effort of framing a journey of questions, but in its own continuing quest to engage effort and support of its own community through dialogue and reflection.