“The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body” is a mouthful to say. Playwright Lisa B. Thompson makes no apologies about that. In fact, she feels that the title deserves to be spoken slowly – with intention and reverence. The same way that Black women deserve to have agency in this world. The same way her deeply personal, genre-defying theatrical work – which features music and movement – should be received when it makes its St. Louis premiere next week. The production will be presented by The Black Rep at Washington University’s Hotchner Studio Theatre.
Presenting the play in St. Louis for the first time is an extra special moment for Thompson. She will also have her work presented in the place where famed Playwright Ntozake Shange spent her formative years. Thompson was inspired to write poetry as a young girl after reading a piece from Shange’s “For Colored Girls…” As fate would have it, Thompson ended up being taught by Shange when she was a grad student at UCLA. “It’s pretty amazing that I wrote my first monologue in her class,” Thompson said. “Isn’t that crazy.”
“The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body” is about embodiment — about inhabiting a Black woman’s body across time, history and experience. Thompson traces a wide and powerful arc, from Sally Hemings, a child enslaved and exploited in Thomas Jefferson’s household, to Michelle Obama, a First Lady whose body, brilliance and humanity have been relentlessly scrutinized. The juxtaposition is striking, but intentional. “From being in the White House as property to being in the White House as First Lady,” Thompson said. “And still seeing the through line.”
That through line — the vulnerability and policing of Black women’s bodies — is not presented as spectacle in her play. Instead, Thompson insists on centering the gift of Black womanhood alongside its burdens. “It’s an extraordinary gift,” she said, “and sometimes a horrific burden. But I want us to sit in the space of the gift.”
This is not a “cheesy” celebration, as Thompson is careful to note. It is textured and honest — one that also makes room for Black women to be regular.
“We don’t have to be spectacular to be honorable,” Thompson said. “I want the theater to be a place of radical permission,” Thompson said. Permission to love ourselves assiduously — a phrase she borrowed from “For Colored Girls…”
“Not after the weight loss, not after the glow-up, not after perfection, but exactly as we are,” Thompson added. “Even at 3 a.m., half-asleep, hair going every which way.”
The piece is also deeply ancestral. Thompson speaks with reverence about the women in her family — grandmothers, aunts, mothers — whose brilliance and dreams were constrained by time, access and circumstance. “I ran with everything,” she said. “Because they didn’t get to.” Writing this piece became a way of reaching back, gathering up the permissions denied to those women, and living them fully — even as, she notes, the world continues to try to snatch those permissions away.
While the piece centers Black women, Thompson is adamant that it is not exclusionary. “This is for anybody who has ever loved, been loved by, or been birthed by a Black woman,” she said. Men are not bashed here; many, she notes, return to see the show with their mothers, sisters and partners in tow.
Bringing the production to The Black Rep also holds special meaning. Thompson, a scholar, playwright and associate dean, spoke with awe about the institution’s 49-year legacy and its founder Ron Himes, whom she calls both legendary and audacious. Thompson said presenting her first production at The Black Rep, feels like alignment.
The work is part of what she refers to as “the Black feminist trilogy,” which also includes “Single Black Female” and the “The Mamalogues.”
“I’m just thrilled to have been able to craft this trilogy about what it means to be a black woman,” Thompson said.
She wrote “The Feminist Guide to the Human Body” while in her 50s, a season she calls “the sweetest decade.” She was writing during a time when she was losing friends and mentors too soon. Researching the ages at which iconic Black women passed away forced a reckoning with time, care and how often Black women are denied rest.
The result is a work she calls her “own medicine.”
“This piece is a love letter to Black women and girls,” Thompson said. “And the joy, and blessing and the honor it has been to be one – and to grow older.”
The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body” will run February 4-March 1 at Washington University’s Hotchner Studio Theatre, inside Edison Theatre, 6445 Forsyth Blvd, 63130. For more information, visit www.theblackrep.org.