/.jazz

“…People be dying inside from all this misery that be creeping around us, waiting for us to get unsure, o-balanced. It even got me in these past few years.

Keep that light, Kiela. You don’t know how beautiful it is to see somebody so damn alive.”

Jazz is a play-with-music written by Zyria Rodgers (YC’21) about the love and community Black femmes provide, build, and struggle to seek out. The play follows 5 Black femmes in a bar in the American South: Tasha is burnt out from her big corporate job, Jenny is struggling to get her degree without turning to alcoholism, Shannon and Marge can’t remember how to love each other, and Kiela just found her dream. With a soundscape of jazz and R&B, /.jazz asks us what it means to find home in each other and break past the burdens and anxieties placed on us by outside forces.

This show was originally written as a thesis for Zyria Rodgers, and was part of the Yale Playwrights Festival in 2021.