by Heaven Williams

An interview with Jnae Thompson

Jnae Thompson is an organizer and grant writer at Freedom Inc., a Black and Southeast Asian, queer, abolitionist, feminist organization based in Madison that provides radical direct services and movement-building support for survivors of gender-based violence. This spring, she stepped back onto the UW-Madison stage as Ainee in cullud wattah, Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s play set against the backdrop of the Flint water crisis. I sat down with Jnae to talk about embodying the role, the research that shaped her performance, and what it means to make theatre that is unapologetically for Black women.

Let’s talk about performance: can you share a bit about your role in cullud wattah?

I played Ainee. She’s the older sister of Marion and the aunt to Reese and Plum. The play centers on the relationships of these Black women across generations, and things that go unnamed in this family. My character is the anti-hero. She has a journey with recovery: she was on substances, which aren’t specifically named, but we know what substance use disorders look like, especially within low-to no-income Black communities. She represents that systemic and interpersonal struggle.

My character is also pregnant for the majority of the play, and a lot of her journey surrounds miscarriages and stillbirths…and she uses that to radicalize herself rather than internalizing these conditions as something being wrong with her or her community. 

The backdrop of the play is the Flint water crisis (which is still ongoing). I don’t care what they say about that class action lawsuit…about identifying all 11,000 homes, about the filters…it’s still happening. And if it’s not Flint, Michigan, it’s somewhere else. Milwaukee has lead concentrations through the roof. Baltimore. Colorado. Pick a place.

Whatever connotations the audience brings in around the water crisis, they’re confronted with it through this Black family actively navigating it in front of them. The water crisis isn’t the main focus; these Black women are in everything they carry and navigate and work through. But the water crisis is still at the forefront, especially when you look at the set and see all of those contaminated water bottles. Every other line is about a water bill, or losing the house—all of these structural forces pressing down on this family.

Did embodying this character produce any new thoughts for you?

Yes, constantly. Even as a Black person who has experienced some of what the play depicts (especially around the more systemic things) being Black isn’t a monolith, so different things come up. For me, especially with Ainee, it was the impact of losing a child, or being pregnant during a crisis like that.

That was the most unfamiliar territory: having to act out labor, having to embody pregnancy when I’ve never been pregnant and don’t want to be. Having to push that aside and actually step into the role of someone who not only wants to be pregnant, not only wants this child, but has already lost six and is about to lose this one too. That weighed on me. I really didn’t want to get that part wrong. I wanted it to be authentic, because that’s a very real experience for a lot of our people, Black women in particular.

What research did you do to prepare for the role? 

You read the script: that’s step one. But afterwards, there are so many names in the play of people implicated in the lawsuit. I started there: who are these folks? Why haven’t I heard their names before? Why aren’t we hearing them now? Why weren’t they charged? Why haven’t they been held accountable?

As we got deeper into line readings and scenes, I started researching pregnancy, infant mortality rates, and birthing mortality rates. What does that look like in Wisconsin? We actually have some of the highest rates in the nation of infant and birthing death for Black women.

I also thought about structural conditions: safe, affordable housing and transportation. My character talks about taking the bus. And what does life actually look like without access to clean water? You can’t use the bathroom the same way. You can’t make tea. You can’t cook. And a major event in the play is Thanksgiving. We know how Black folks are about Thanksgiving and food. To have to hold a family together without clean water? That was something I had to really sit with.

There were also connections to my work at Freedom Inc.—I have a coworker who is a peer support coach specializing in working with Black women struggling with substance abuse. She works in the drug court program: getting people resources, holding them accountable, and pouring into them. A lot of what she taught me was how to be the organizer I am. And a lot of those same things that she embodies, Ainee is actively navigating as she radicalizes herself: she goes to organizer meetings and politicizes herself around her conditions. I’m fortunate to see that in real time with folks at Freedom Inc. 

What surprised you most from this experience?

How much your life changes without clean water. I knew how impactful the water crisis is, but thinking about it beyond Flint, beyond Detroit: entire communities have been destroyed because of access to water. Land destroyed. In a lot of ways, access to water has made this economic, capitalistic society more powerful and it has given enormous power to people who have abused it. And this family is just trying to cook a Thanksgiving meal. 

Will you tell us how you first got 

into acting?

I’ve been doing performing arts since I was three. Violin, different instruments, different sectors…but with the university, I didn’t start theatre until my last semester, senior year. I had senioritis bad. I just needed something to get me through.

So it was during a Black Arts Movement class with Professor Sandra Adell: we were reading Wine in the Wilderness and she made an announcement: they were putting it on at the University Theatre and needed Black actors. I figured I’d audition for a smaller role: minimal lines, not that much of a time commitment. I ended up getting the larger role! It was a really great experience. I loved being part of an all-Black cast with a Black director and a Black playwright. It felt powerful, being in that production on a predominantly white campus.

After that, Professor Adell connected me with Professor Kelly, who was directing Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. He reached out directly, and I ended up playing Martha. Then I heard about cullud wattah. I did my research, saw that the playwright is an alumna of this institution, and felt a deep connection to it. When I saw Ainee’s role, I thought: it’s either her, or I’m in the audience. I’m really fortunate they saw something in me and I was able to give everything to that role.

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to get involved in theatre?

Honestly? I don’t take my own advice half the time. I was in my head like, you didn’t do theatre, what are you doing getting on that stage? But if you’re not already in the theatre department: just go for it. Whether that’s attending a show, or talking to someone who’s been in a production…asking about the time commitment, what auditioning looks like. And have an open mind about what participation means. It doesn’t just mean acting and memorizing lines. There’s directing, producing, lighting, sound, set design…so many key elements that exist long before casting even starts. Start there, and a lot of the other pieces will hopefully fall in line.

What do you hope the audience took away from cullud wattah?

There was a talkback that playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza facilitated, and someone asked her who she wrote the play for. She said she wrote it for Black women and gender-expansive folks. Everyone else in the audience is a guest: welcome to participate and observe, but this play is for Black women.

As a Black woman, as a queer Black woman, our stories and our unique experiences are pushed to the margins so often. They’re not even an afterthought a lot of the time. There’s this expectation that queer Black people have to be at the forefront of everyone else’s issues, and when it comes to ours, we’re dismissed, ignored, or not believed. This play was an opportunity to directly contradict that.

All of these themes—poverty, access to water, safe and affordable housing, unstable employment, running for public office—are things Black women are navigating right now. And then there are the lived experiences of the actors themselves. I think Erika set the stage for us to live out that contradiction. And for us to exercise the possibility of true freedom when we center the stories and voices of those most impacted…what happens when they are heard, seen, believed in, and celebrated, especially within systems and institutions that try to oppress us?

You mentioned wanting the audience to be filled with Black folks. How did that go, and why do you think Black audiences have historically been harder to reach for productions like this?

Historically, these spaces haven’t been accessible to our people. Theatre and entertainment in America (minstrelsy, blackface, the way Black people have been characterized) a lot of that history is racist projections of Blackness, not Black people actually defining what Blackness looks like on the stage. To confront that history and then celebrate the definitions Black people have created on our own is a big feat, especially at a predominantly white institution. It requires intention. Investment. A decolonization of how we’ve been doing things.

Beyond the history, the language can be inaccessible. The prices can be inaccessible. There’s a level of policing in traditional theater spaces (this idea that you have to be quiet) when a lot of Black communication is call and response. A lot of how we transfer knowledge is oral. American entertainment hasn’t done enough to credit Black people and Black entertainers for its economic success, and hasn’t done enough to tell accurate Black stories.

For cullud wattah, I invited all of our culturally specific support groups from Freedom Inc: 50 Plus and Fabulous, Sister Circle, and our youth groups, Black Girls Matter and Freedom Girls. Seeing them in the audience and having those follow-up conversations afterward? That’s why I act. It’s a form of resistance. It empowers people to share their stories, to be in a space, and take up space. Being able to create that and share it with people in my community was really special to me.

Would you have performed differently with a larger Black crowd?

Of course, because the audience is part of the performance just as much as the other actors on stage, at least, that’s how I feel. If you’re sharing a Black story, if this play is for Black women, there’s a different kind of energy that Black women give me as an actress that a white person can’t give. There’s just not that shared understanding. Whether it’s written in the script, performed through my actions, or not said at all, there’s another language we’re speaking together. A different conversation happening. That lends itself to a different performance. The performance changes every night depending on the audience, but the message really changes depending on who we’re talking to. And if we’re talking to Black women, that conversation is sacred.

cullud wattah cast: