Confederates Tickets | Schedule for 2024/2025 Events

Confederates

Confederates is a play by Dominique Morisseau, a MacArthur genius award-winning writer. It deals with the lives of two Black women from the past to explore the themes of racial and gender bias in American society. The play is directed by Nataki Garrett and is approximately two hours long with no intermission.

The lives of enslaved women are presented with a touch of humor to show that life has always been complex and multi-faceted. The play has five characters- four Black people and one white woman.

The Plot

Confederates is a play with a dual timeline where a tenured college professor Sandra has to deal with the backlash of having a racist photograph on her office door in one track, and Sara has to handle the abuse and oppression as a plantation worker.

Sandra also gets into arguments with other professors. Malik, a male student, thinks she favors female students, and Jade, a professor without tenure, considers Sandra a competition. Then, there is Candice, the assistant who jokes about a particular race.

The other part of the play is set during the Civil War. Sara, the slave, is bandaging the wounds of a runaway slave and Union soldier. He tells her to stay safe on the plantations (where many Black people toil from day to night).

Sara says she also wants to do something and ‘die like a man’ instead of being reduced to work in the background because of her gender. Sara gets a (sexual) proposition from the plantation master’s daughter Miss Sue, who likes to indulge in lesbianism. Another slave, LuAnne, is the master’s concubine, which angers Sara.

Confederates shows the parallels between Sara and Sandra and how their race and gender affect their lives. They are also childless women, thus strengthening the similarities despite the difference in timelines.

Verbal fights are an integral part of the play and show the writer’s ability at creating something so powerful and impactful. Dominique Morisseau handles the two tracks with ease and balances them with aplomb. The director keeps sequences blunt and to the point.

The shifting between the timelines is almost erratic but never confusing. The use of sharp humor works wonderfully well with the plot. The costumes are flashy, loud, and empathic, especially in the past timeline. Malik’s paper comparing the plantations with modern corporate America forms the basis for the play on multiple levels.