Being Up in Here and All the Other Businesses that Don't Concern You OR When You See a Buncha Black People Running, What Do You Do?
Marissa Joyce Stamps
“We runnin cross country.”
Being Up in Here… follows best friends Aaliyah and Eli who get magical running sneakers and run On Their Way, as far as space as near as Brownsville's GnM bodega, to reach The Final Destination where they're to meet Mama She. But, what happens when they make the unfamiliar familiar and run off course?
Written + Directed by Marissa Joyce Stamps
Co-Produced by Marissa Joyce Stamps, Ava Elizabeth Novak, Thalia Sablon, + Nola Latty Featuring Alexis Dobynes, Aja Downing, Marie Stamps, Mariyea,
Chloe Mutebi, + Danté Charles Crichlow
Scenic Design by lucas a. degirolamo
Lighting Design by André Segar
Costume Design by DeShon Elem
cw: fog, strobe, racial slurs
Find them: marissajoycestamps.com @marissajoycestamps @beingupinhere
By invoking running, the play centers the utopian possibilities in Black folks', especially Black women and femmes', relationship to rest, recuperation and restoration, while trying to conquer the utter guilt that comes with embracing those principles for ourselves. And in the same breath, Being Up in Here… brings into focus the internal conflict of deciding whether to it's better to stay close to the familiar, like one's close-knit hometown community, or if it's better to uncover the unfamiliar and take the risk of seeing what lies outside in uncharted territory, and examines the nuances of prioritizing one over the other in one’s search for home, belonging, and self-actualization.
Marissa Joyce Stamps is a Black, Haitian-American, NYC-based Afrosurreal artist. She won the 2023 Princess Grace Playwriting Award, is a member of Clubbed Thumb's 2023-2024 ECWG, a Mercury Store Fall 2023 Lead Artist, a New Georges Affiliate Artist, + was named a Finalist for NBT’s 2023 I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency. Recent plays: You Can Tell from the Twisted Juniper (2022 O'Neill NPC Finalist; Chautauqua Theater Company's 2021 New Play Workshop; The Workshop Theater's Fall 2020 Intensive), Blue Fire Burns the Hottest (Exponential Festival 2022; Orchard Project’s 2021 Performance Lab), deadbodydeadbodydeadbody (Ars Nova ANT Fest 2022), Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis (Bushwick Starr Reading Series 2023), Being Up in Here and All the Other Businesses that Don't Concern You OR If You See a Buncha Black People Running, What Do You Do? (Exponential Festival 2024, Brick Aux 2022), and Techno Paper Planes (Moxie Arts Commission 20/21).
Marissa has also collaborated with The Public Theater, The 24 Hour Plays, Fire This Time Festival, Conch Shell Productions, Dixon Place, Irondale, The Anthropologists, New Ohio Theatre, Keen Company, Wild Project, BUFU, and more. She is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild and Playwrights’ Center. Marissa serves as The Workshop Theater's Literary Manager and also teaches in Brooklyn College's English Department. She graduated with her MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College, studying under haruna lee and Dennis A. Allen II. She also earned her BFA in Drama and BA in Journalism from NYU.
Photography by Danté Charles Crichlow