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The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body

Playwright: Lisa B. Thompson
Director: Margo Hall
Dramaturg: Amissa Miller

Lisa B. Thompson makes a triumphant return to the Bay Area with her latest work, expanding upon her acclaimed career exploring Black middle class womanhood in America. The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body details an intimate examination into aging and health disparities for Black women as well as capitalism's impact on Black bodies and spirits. By combining poetic musings, spiritual dance and a soulful mixtape, this piece offers a community guide as a love song to Black women.

The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by SEW Productions Inc, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.  VORTEX Repertory Company, FUSEBOX AUSTIN, Pyramid Theatre Company, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: www.npnweb.org

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Lisa B. Thompson is an award-winning artist/scholar whose satirical comedies, poignant dramas, and insightful criticism explode stereotypes about Black life in the US, particularly the experiences of the Black middle class. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway, throughout the US, and internationally by Crossroads Theatre, Theatre Rhinoceros, the Vortex, The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 1^st Stage Theatre, Soul Rep Theatre Company, Austin Playhouse, Ensemble Theatre, The Billie Holiday Theatre, Chiswick Playhouse, and The National Black Theatre Festival among others. Thompson’s publications include Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (University of Illinois Press, 2009), Single Black Female (Samuel French, 2012), Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues: Three Plays (Northwestern University Press, 2020), and The Mamalogues (Samuel French, 2021). She has also published articles and reviews in Theatre Journal, Journal of American Drama, Theatre Survey, NPR, Criterion Collection, Huffington Post and The Washington Post. Her creative and scholarly work has received support from a number of institutions including the American Council of Learned Societies, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Millay Arts, National Performance Network, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Clayman Institute for Gender Research, W. E. B. DuBois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center, The Fusebox International Festival, and Texas Performing Arts. In 2022 Thompson began co-hosting and co-producing Black Austin Matters, a podcast and radio segment on KUT: Austin’s NPR station that explores Black life, culture, and politics in Central Texas. She is currently the Patton Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and the College of Liberal Arts’ Advisor to the Dean for Faculty Mentoring and Support at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre at MoAD is a collaboration that connects theater and the visual arts, bringing both audiences together, making each art form more accessible and relevant to both constituencies and providing context across art forms. Each presentation will be followed by an audience discussion.