JOY NESBITT
WRITER
Good
2023
Bullock Creek, SC. 1862. Ginnie is an enslaved woman enwrapped in a 10 year relationship with her captor, Doc. Navigating oppression of plantation life with 5 children, Ginnie attempts to conduct a romantic relationship with Doc as the civil war rages around the plantation. On the eve of emancipation, she must make a decision: to stay with her captor or free herself. Based on the true family history of the playwright, Good explores freedom, coercion, and ways in which Black women have had to navigate misogynoir throughout history.
This piece was written and performed for the Rachel Baptiste Programme at Smock Alley Theatre. A reading was directed by Annie Ryan at Smock Alley Theatre.
Barbie, Girl
2022
Short play performed as part of a collaboration between The Williamstown Theater Festival 2022 and the Williams College Museum of Art entitled Working in Desire: The Political Economy of Black Feminine Labor.
This piece was directed by Veshonte Brown and performed by Jessica Caputo. View the performance here.
Meditations on Somebodiness
2022
An afrosurrealist play about what it means to be in the process of identity-making as a Black person in America (and any other place).
This play was workshopped under the direction of Eoghan Carrick at the Lir and under the direction of Joy Nesbitt at the BIPOC Early Career Theater-makers Program at The Williamstown Theater Festival 2021.
Speed Dating
2020
Call, Response, and Go-Go Live: Making a Musical Movement for Black Lives in Washington, D.C. in 2020
2020
Short play about online speed dating workshopped at the Harvard Black Playwrights Festival 2021.
Honors joint thesis written in the departments of Anthropology and Music at Harvard University. The thesis documents the work of the Washington, D.C. organization “Long Live GoGo” in the summer and fall of 2020. An engaged scholarly project with rich theoretical dimensions, it highlights Go-Go’s recurring role in resisting antiBlackness and the organization’s grassroots techniques for generating political momentum and strategy.