What to Send Up When It Goes Down Archives

Sixteen people seated and standing in a group on the set, which features white plastic folded to resemble paper, upon which are written the names of people lost to police violence and racism. Candles glow behind them. The group is mostly Black and Brown people.

To heal and hear

by Kerry Reid October 5, 2022October 5, 2022

Aleshea Harris’s 2018 performance piece, What to Send Up When It Goes Down, had its local premiere this past spring with Congo Square Theatre Company in a production that played both in West Town (at GRAY Chicago) and the south side (Rebuild Foundation Stony Island Arts Bank). It’s back now in a short residency with […]

Theater Review

What to Send Up When It Goes Down is a bracing experience

by Jack Helbig April 5, 2022April 19, 2022

Early in Congo Square’s powerful hybrid theatrical event—a part healing ritual, part sensitivity session, part exuberant dance theater freak-out, and part explosive agitprop political satire written by Aleshea Harris, directed by Ericka Ratcliff, and performed by a sharp ensemble of nimble actors—one of the characters breaks the fourth wall and pointedly tells “non-Black” audience members, […]