1. What is the goal of INK of Our KIN, and where did the idea for it come from?
When I created Ink of Our Kin, I wanted to build a home for Black stories—a place where our voices are not only heard but tended, honored, and allowed to breathe. After fifteen years of producing work that centers marginalized communities, I felt a pull toward something more intimate, more lineage-driven. Staged readings offer a rare kind of clarity: the words stand bare, the actors lean in, and the audience becomes part of the conversation. INK of our KIN was created with four primary objectives in mind: to center Black narratives, to honor trailblazing playwrights who forged a powerful, often underproduced canon, to spotlight contemporary voices who carry that legacy forward, and to provide opportunities for less experienced Black actors to gain more stage experience.
2. The shows that you’ve selected for INK of Our KIN this year are two classics and one more modern piece. Why did you choose them? What do they have in common?
A Raisin in the Sun and The Piano Lesson anchor us in the brilliance of our ancestors—artists who carved space where none existed. The Motherfucker with the Hat, though written by a non-Black playwright, expands the conversation into the present, offering characters whose struggles with love, addiction, loyalty, and survival resonate deeply within Black and Brown communities. Together, these plays form a continuum of truth-telling.
Specifically, I chose A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry) because it is the root system. It’s the play that cracked open American theatre, insisting that Black interior life was worthy of the mainstage. It grounds the season in legacy, dignity, and the generational cost of deferred dreams. I chose The Piano Lesson (August Wilson) because it is the lineage. Wilson’s work carries ancestral memory, ritual, and the weight of inheritance. It deepens the season’s exploration of what we carry, what we release, and what we fight to protect. I chose The Motherfucker with the Hat (Stephen Adly Guirgis) because it is the now. Guirgis—though not Black—writes with fierce empathy for marginalized communities, and this play engages Black and Brown characters with integrity, humor, and unflinching honesty. It expands the season’s conversation into contemporary struggles with addiction, loyalty, love, and survival.
Despite their differences in era and authorship, the three plays are powerfully similar in that:
They center people navigating systems that were not built for them.
They center family—chosen or blood—as both anchor and battleground.
They use humor, pain, and poetry to reveal truth.
They insist on the humanity of characters who are often flattened or stereotyped elsewhere.
And crucially: even though Guirgis is not Black, his work shares the same lineage of care, accountability, and truth-telling that INK of our KIN honors.
3. What do you think audiences will take away from the INK of Our KIN shows this season?
Our season invites audiences into a layered, intergenerational conversation. We expect that they will leave with: a deeper understanding of Black theatrical tradition, a sense of continuity (seeing how themes of home, inheritance, addiction, love, and liberation echo across decades), a deeper appreciation for the diversity of Black experience, not as a monolith but as a mosaic, and a recognition (primarily through Guirgis’ work) that allyship in storytelling is possible, when non-Black writers approach Black characters with respect, nuance, and accountability.
Wortham Resident Company
Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective presents
Ink Of Our Kin
Fri & Sat, Feb 6 – 21 • 7:30 pm
Celebrate theatre history with Different Strokes! and Ink Of Our Kin — a bold new series featuring staged readings that spotlight ethnic and cultural diversity in theatre. Ink Of Our Kin runs Fridays and Saturdays, February 6–21 at 7:30, with a new powerful play each week: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry; our special Valentine’s presentation, The Motherfu(ker With the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis; and closing with the iconic The Piano Lesson by August Wilson.
