Define “Black,” a work-in-progress by actress and playwright Nessa Amherst, joins the likes of Issa Rae’s Insecure, Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum, and Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie as an ode to the awkward Black girls who are trying to navigate a world that far too often puts Blackness in a box.
The play — presented as a reading directed by Julia Rudgers (with a swing performance by Mahlet Gebreyesus) — is set in a fictionalized audition room where two Black actresses from different walks of life, Brianne Jackson and Akeelah Harris (played by Taylor Mitchell and Icy Montague, respectively), are trying out for the same role. Through these two characters, more alike than they realize, Amherst explores what it means to be Black and a woman in the entertainment industry, one that’s littered with minimizing clichés from the Angry Black Woman to the Mammy, the Hypersexual Jezebel, and now the Disposable Black Girlfriend.
Yet ironically, while Amherst attempts to reject the stereotypes imposed on Black people (e.g., “baby mama drama”), she unintentionally feeds into them. After all, while the character Brianne is not like the others, deviating from what Black is supposed to be because she likes to read, is reserved, and talks properly, the character Akeelah is loud, brash, and all the things Blackness has been reduced to. In fact, Brianne even goes as far as to call Akeelah, a woman she just met, a “cheap slut,” because of her attire and affinity for good sex, while simultaneously complaining about the world’s Karens.
For all the talk about redefining what Blackness is, and recognizing its beauty and diversity — and while Brianne is humanized, later revealing that there’s more to her than what meets the eye, more Black than one would assume — Akeelah comes off as, quite frankly, flat and one-dimensional. Lacking in depth, it’s as if she’s merely the antagonist in Brianne’s story as the ghetto mean girl, despite showing a clear interest and passion in the performance arts and theater, a field that historically has been primarily white.
Although the play is based on the writer’s lived experiences, as the show progresses, it’s hard not to notice an implicit bias, one that seems like thinly veiled classism and a dash of anti-Blackness.
Or, maybe, it’s my own lived experience as the shy, awkward Black girl who liked seemingly “white” things, but still could rap along to the hottest trap songs and dance like a video girl on BET. Because while the loud, sassy Black is a popular media trope, a stereotype, the loud, sassy Black girl can be a bookworm and smart too.
In hindsight, I guess that’s really what Define “Black” is all about, because how do you define and categorize a people that is so diverse the Founding Fathers couldn’t even figure us out. I mean, for a very long time, we weren’t even considered a whole person.
And while Whitney Houston may have been seen as “too pop,” and “too white,” as Akeelah pointed out with a perfectly timed reference to the late singer’s own identity crisis, the same way she belted out “I’m every woman, it’s all in me,”
Black is everything and then some.
Define “Black”
By Nessa Amherst
Presented by N.A. Productions
Running Time: 50 minutes
Dates and Times:
July 12, 2026, at 7:45 pm
July 17, 2026, at 7:30 pm
Genre: Drama
Company based: Silver Spring, MD
Website: www.nessaamherst.com
Directed by: Julia Rudgers
Playwright: Nessa Amherst
Performed by: Ariel Friendly (07/12 performance), Taylor Mitchell (07/17 performance), Ivy Montague, Rakell Foye (07/17 performance), Nessa Amherst (07/12 performance), Mahlet Gebreyesus (07/17 performance)
The complete 2026 District Fringe Festival lineup is online here.
The 2026 District Fringe Festival calendar is online here.
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