Chris Francisque (L) and Kwasi Thomas (Photo by Emily Cooper)

In Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, an urban street corner is also a slave plantation and Egypt — because Moses and Kitch, the two Black friends who are hanging out there, can’t leave.

Nwandu is taking inspiration from both the Bible’s Book of Exodus and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Inspired by their childhood Sunday school teacher, Kitch believes Moses will lead him to the Promised Land. But, when a white police officer they call Ossifer shows up, he makes the terms of their entrapment explicit: “One step off this block and I’ll shoot you dead.” Still, like Beckett’s tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, Moses and Kitch struggle to keep their hopes alive: unsure of how to change their state but dedicated to doing so, they play games to pass the time. In a favourite, Top Ten Promised Land, they list the pleasures they’ll experience when they’re truly free. Kitch dreams of caviar — until Moses tells him it’s fish eggs.

The are so many similarities to Godot. That play’s lone tree becomes a streetlamp. The turnip Vladimir offers to Estragon turns into an old pizza crust. The friends debate the complications of a double suicide. And they have visitors — who reveal the fundamental divergence between Godot and Pass Over: Godot’s existentialism is philosophical; Pass Over’s is about Black survival in the face of systemic racism.

As Ossifer makes clear, police violence is a relentless threat to Black bodies. When Moses and Kitch pause to remember all the friends and loved ones who have been shot by cops, listing them takes a while — and the list illustrates the poetic specificity that infuses Nwandu’s script. There’s Ed with the dreadlocks, “not light-skinned Ed”, “dat tall dude got dat elbow rash”, and Mike with “dat messed-up knee.” [Read more…]