“WHEN PAGES BREATHE: AMERICAN BLACK/OUT”: The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University has presented “When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out.” Co-directed by Chesney Snow and Anya Pearson, the lecture-performance was presented December 5-6 at the Lewis Arts complex’s Wallace Theater. Above, from left: Chesney Snow and Anya Pearson perform a scene from Pearson’s “The Measure of Innocence,” one of numerous works excerpted. (Photo by Tim Sexton/Lewis Center for the Arts)
By Donald H. Sanborn III
The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University has presented When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out. This compelling lecture-performance offered poems, monologues, and scenes by numerous, mulitgenerational African American writers and playwrights. The anthology of excerpts probed overarching themes of race, gender, and power dynamics.
When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out was staged December 5-6 in the Lewis Center’s Wallace Theater. Conceived, co-directed, and performed by Anya Pearson and Chesney Snow, the piece also included performances by Princeton University senior Destine Harrison-Williams.
The Lewis Center’s website describes the works presented during the approximately 90-minute event as “ranging from the rich historical lineage of Black American theater to a live resistance-driven narrative lecture on culture and power.”
On the website Snow explains that the excerpts “include playwrights and poets who have resisted authoritarian narrative capture over the last century. It archives suppressed histories and invites audiences to resist erasure through community dialogue and organizing.”
Snow is a Drama Desk Award-winning interdisciplinary artist. He is a performer, composer, lyricist, sound designer, and teaching artist whose credits include work on Broadway and off-Broadway, as well as at McCarter Theatre. Snow’s biography notes that his “work as an educator has centered on engaging the arts as a vehicle for social change and empowerment.”
A 2021-22 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, Pearson is an award-winning playwright, poet, screenwriter, actress, and activist. She is a 2025 Advance Gender Equity (AGE) in the Arts Legacy Playwright. Her biography states that many of her works in progress “advocate for survivors of sexual and domestic violence, BIPOC communities, the chronically ill, those with rare diseases, and the disabled.”
The Lewis Center notes that Harrison-Williams’ participation in the project represents his “independent work toward a minor in the Program in Theater and Music Theater. An English major from Miami, he is also minoring in creative writing.” He has performed in multiple Lewis Center and Princeton Summer Theater productions. A teaching fellow with Trenton Arts at Princeton, he also is a member of the Princeton Playhouse Ensembles.
Although When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out is described as a “lecture,” it is treated as a theatrical event, with minimal but present production design. Each segment is illustrated by a slideshow (the visual art direction is by A.K. Lovelace, with lighting by Louise Sanches Barbosa).
Nonchalant but steady music (composed by AJ Khaw) introduces the comparatively humorous first segment, an excerpt from “Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men.” The story appears in Mules and Men (1935), a collection of Southern folktales compiled by Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960).
In the story, Man asks God for more strength than Woman, so that he can be her “boss.” The request is granted, and Man immediately uses his newfound strength to try to assert control. When Woman’s own prayers for more strength are denied — God explains that he never takes back a gift he has given — the Devil suggests that she instead ask God for three keys that hang on his “mantelpiece.”
God gives Woman the keys, which the Devil explains control three locks: the kitchen, the bedroom, and the cradle. The latter is the most important, as Man “does not want to be cut off from his generations at all.” In addition to the crucial element of being able to control access to generations, the story introduces a theme of power dynamics imposed by (manipulated) divine intervention.
The acting talents of Snow and Pearson immediately are fully on display as they read the story. Because Man and Woman both pray, both actors get a chance to play God (though Snow’s performance of the Devil is arguably even more entertaining).
Later, Snow and Pearson also are outstanding in their delivery of a scene from Pearson’s The Measure of Innocence, winner of the 2020 Drammy Award for Best Original Script. The play reimagines Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure through a contemporary lens, probing injustice in the criminal justice system. (For this segment only, Pearson and Snow change their clothes, with the latter donning an orange outfit evocative of a prison uniform.)
Snow portrays Claudio, a young Black man wrongly arrested for a crime. Pearson plays Juliet, Claudio’s pregnant fiancée. Claudio, who already is becoming traumatized by life in jail, is increasingly worried about missing his forthcoming child’s life. (This is established in an impassioned speech movingly delivered by Snow). Claudio must decide whether to take a plea deal, as his public defender advises, or stand trial in an attempt to prove his innocence.
Pearson and Snow also act together in a scene from A Raisin in the Sun (1959) by Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965). In the scene, chauffeur Walter Lee (Snow) is frustrated that his wife Ruth (Pearson) is not more supportive of an investment scheme he plans with a shady business connection (the scheme eventually falls through).
Like the opening segment, this scene addresses gender tension; like the scene from The Measure of Innocence, Hansberry’s scene presents a man who anxiously sees time fleeting; in Walter Lee’s case, it is time to provide a better life for his son, rather than stories about “how rich white people live.”
Snow recalls that in 1996 August Wilson (1945-2005) gave a speech in Princeton. “The Ground on Which I Stand” was delivered at the Theatre Communications Group conference. Snow quotes this line from Wilson’s speech: “Those who would deny black Americans their culture would also deny them their history and the inherent values that are a part of all human life.”
In Wilson’s Fences (1983) a high school football player, the optimistic Corey Maxson clashes with his domineering and pessimistic father. Harrison-Williams excels in delivering a monologue in which Corey denounces his father’s domineering behavior. The delivery is beautifully shaped, with an unsparing crescendo from pain to anger.
Pearson delivers a devastating monologue from The Mojo and the Sayso (1988) by Aisha Rahman (1936-2014), in which a mother grieves for her son who has been shot by police (the play is inspired by the shooting of Clifford Glover). Snow notes that the play’s premiere was presented by Crossroads Theater Company in New Brunswick.
Dominique Morisseau (1978-) is represented by a scene from Pipeline (2017), which happens to have been staged by Princeton University’s Theatre Intime in 2024. In a key scene, a teacher (Pearson) lectures on disparate publications of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool,” while a student (Harrison-Williams) quotes the poem, the line readings progressing from almost jovial to ominous.
The presenters recall deeply personal connections to several of the included authors. Snow (who details the family history research that led to his 2018 work The Unwriten Law) recalls meeting Amiri Baraka (1934-2014), a playwright whose work recently was staged by Trenton’s Passage Theatre, at a poetry reading.
Pearson recounts that Darren Canady was a panelist when one of her plays was discussed at a conference in Alaska, and spoke sharply on her behalf when an unhelpful (at best) suggestion was made about changing one of her characters.
She also recalls finding solace and inspiration in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1976) by Ntozake Shange (1948-2018). Pearson aspires to be for the next generation what Shange was for her: “a beacon of hope and survival, and a testament to the transformational power of theater.”
That quote aptly summarizes one of the countless tasks that Snow and Pearson (aided by Harrison-Williams) accomplish with When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out. The opening segment concerns a key to future generations. This show has given us a key to a vast library of under-known works by African American writers — works that hopefully will find a wider audience, to the cultural benefit of future generations of writers and audiences.
To watch a video in which Anya Pearson and Chesney Snow discuss “When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out,” visit arts.princeton.edu/events/when-pages-breathe-american-black-out/2025-12-06. For information about upcoming events presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts, visit arts.princeton.edu.