Vogue: Congratulations onSunset Baby!
How has a Premiere Residency at Signature Theatre supported your work and vision as an artist?
Dominique Morisseau:It gives me a home.
Photo: Damu Malik
For most writers, thats the big hurdle were trying to jump in our careers.
There are not enough stages for all the pages out there.
To have somewhere thats committed to putting my work up in New York City is huge.
Moses Ingram (as Nina) and Russell Hornsby (as Kenyatta) inSunset Baby
This is an older play, but it feels very contemporary.
How do you think it sits in your canon?
This is one of my more raw plays.
J. Alphonse Nicholson (as Damon) and Ingram inSunset Baby
Its definitely not for the fainthearted.
Its like a 10-years-ago version of myself, and its unfiltered in a way that I love.
Im in an unfiltered space again in my life, so meeting this play now is spot-on for me.
Hornsby inSunset Baby
I also feel like it sits in the world in a right kind of way.
Theres a commitment level to it that most people who are calling themselves activists dont have.
And theres a cost to it that most people are not considering.
Theres a safer form of activism these days that sits comfortably in the click of a button.
The current moment seems to reify rightness and a singularity of view.
In your work broadly, and particularly in this play, you hold space for complexity.
All three characters have a complicated relationship to activism.
How they get there is through a confrontation of the self.
And thats the hardest part of anyones journey, I think.
Hes recently come back into her life looking for something.
What product do you think Kenyatta is after?
Theres the tangible product of the letters from Ninas mother, but they stand for something else.
Thats what so many activists coming out of Kenyattas era of activism dont have: healing.
Its left a gap in them, in their lives.
Im looking at that unhealed trauma that activism also brings.
Were so immediate and sound-bitey and clickbaity.
I think were afraid of what comes up in reflections.
You dont get immediate gratification, except for personal growth.
Communicating with yourself feels like the real way to healing.
If healing takes time, reflection is what you need time todo.
Thats not something we afford ourselves right now.
Do you feel like this play is a letter from your younger self to where you are now?
Maybe, but I think its more my father, who partly inspired the play.
Hes no longer with me now, but he was with me in 2013 when I wrote it.
My father used to record himself all the time in videos.
I feel like I saw through my father for the first time.
Hornsby inSunset Baby
Why do you think that is?
My brother and I joke that our dad was doing selfies before there were selfies.
He was just doing it to document himself.
There was a purity to it.
He didnt know who was going to see themmaybe just me and my brother or just himself.
There was a lot of vulnerable honesty and imperfection going on because it was just private.
And I felt like I could see him.
Like Im in the room with him, and Im watching so close.
The camera catches your breath, it catches your sigh, it catches your stutter.
Cameras are very intimate.
Yes, and also: Can youreleaseyourself?
Can you release yourideaof someone else?
Can you release your idea ofcontrolling someone elseto set yourself free?
Damon needs to control Nina for feel validated in the relationship.
But he cannot control her.
Nina needs to control her father and how he processes her mother.
But she cant control him, she cant control his grief.
To get to a place of freedom is about releasing control.
Thats a lesson in the play but also a lesson in my life that I have not quite maintained.
On that note, has becoming a parent changed your writing practice?
It definitely makes me waste no time because I dont have it to give.
Being a parent makes me realize my own lack of control.
I have to be willing to learn and pay attention and not dictate.
And as an artist I have to do the same thing.
You also write for television and film.
What do you think theater in particular can offer us right now?
You cant check out.
And you have to stay the course with the story.
The live sport means: This is what we got, its never going to be the same again.
Its the immediacy of no day but today in theater.
It does a better job of connecting us and making us responsible to each other and ourselves.
You mentioned youre more unfiltered now.
Im older, and I care less about what people think of me.
Ive learned to care less about getting approval or likes.
Ive learned the journey of my truth and how much thats the destination for me: truth.
Im less filtered because I dont feel like I have to compartmentalize my humanity to get to be me.
I want to be myself fully.
And those are the terms that make me feel the most well, mentally and spiritually.
I dont want to be here to be somebody else or a fragmented person.
I want to be my whole self.
Do you think theres a link between theater and activism?
Absolutely, theres a huge link.
Nina Simone believed that an artists duty is to reflect the times.
A lot of artists, particularly in theater, sign up for Simones version of that mission.
Can you say more about this?
We have the power to shift the narrative around people and how theyre thought of in the world.
We have power to shape ideas not only around people but also around policy and how people are treated.
Because the way we think about people dictates how theyre going to be governed.
One of the greatest tools of every kind of oppressiondictatorship, war, violenceis the dehumanization of the other.
The goal of war is to dehumanize the people that youre at war against.
Ive experienced so much dehumanization of my own city, Detroit, of countries, of people.
I think back to the time of the movement of the play, when there was dehumanization of activists.
And in 2015 people were scared to use the hashtag Black Lives Matter.
So many artists asked me, How do you feel comfortable putting #blacklivesmatter in your posts?
Do you feel like the industry is watching?
Do you get called out on it, do you get in trouble for it?
And in 2020everybodyhad #blacklivesmatter.
Theres a dehumanization of the people who are perceived to be on the other side.
We have to face that were always all the same people.
People are people, humans are humans.
Art is the only thing thats going to help us reconcile that.
Whats inspiring you these days?
Disruption inspires me lately.
Harmful things that are happening in the world are inspiring me to contribute the opposite.
Devastation in the world inspires me to put beautiful creation into the world.
The idea that were all so conscious of health and wellness now is an amazing and beautiful thing.
Thats the next generation doing a damn good job of pushing that agenda to the forefront.
I appreciate this generation for putting a spotlight on that disconnect.
What gives you hope at this moment?
In a way, history gives me hope.
Nothing is ever permanent.
History teaches me things that get undone can get rebuilt.
Things that burn can be built again, that the phoenix rises from the ashes.
The current state of the world right now is pretty bleak in a lot of ways.
But history tells me its impossible that it stays exactly this way.
What gives me hope is a little bit of history and a little bit of the future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
