Performance Dates & Times

Thursday, November 6th at 7:30pm

Friday, November 7th at 7:30pm

Saturday, November 8th at 3:00pm

Saturday, November 8th at 7:30pm

Masks will be optional during these performances.

Content Warning

Gun shot and mentions of slavery

CAMILLE SIMONE THOMAS: SWEET BLOOD

This performance is a part of JACKLABS resident artist series

Written by Camille Simone Thomas

Directed by Raecine Singletary

Sweet Blood traces the lives of three free Afro-Taino Maroon sisters in colonial Jamaica as they navigate familial love, cultural commitments, lineage, and liberation. Drawing on ancestral memory and critical fabulation, the play unearths stories buried beneath the colonial archive, imagining what freedom might have felt like for Black women living in the shadow of slavery. 

At once intimate and epic, Sweet Blood asks what it means to inherit histories of both resistance and how we carry the weight of our ancestors’ struggles in our own bodies. Through lyrical language and embodied storytelling, the play blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead, the remembered and the forgotten. It is an offering, a mourning song, and a celebration: for the women who came before, for the daughters yet to come, for the possibilities of liberation that refuse to die.

About the Artists

Camille Simone Thomas (Playwright, Producer) is a 5th generation Detroiter through her father’s side and a first generation Jamaican through her mothers. It’s important for her to name this because her work most often interrogates cultural legacies, familial healing, spirituality + ancestral wisdom, and the general kicking and screaming of how Black folks get free despite the oppressive forces of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. She’s a multi-hyphenate playwright-producer-performer-educator. Her plays have been workshopped and performed at The Connelly Theatre, MCC, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, Blackboard Playwriting series, Lime Arts Theatre company, American Slavery Project, The Obie Award-winning Harlem9 and Detroit Public Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Workshop Theatre, Barter Theatre Company, The National Women's Theatre Festival, The Brick, and more! She was a 2023 Broadway Advocacy Coalition Artivism fellow. A 2024 finalist for the Eugene O’neill NPC for her play “At God’s Back”. A 2023 New Harmony Project finalist, 2023 Hedgebrook Writers retreat finalist, 2023 Catskills Creative Residency finalist. She was in the 2024/2025 Civilians R&D Group, 2024/25 Artistic Research Fellow at The Folger in DC, and is currently the 2024/25 JACKLabs Artist.

Raecine Singletary (Director) is a Jamaican American director and Baltimore native. She works to cultivate art that centers, celebrates, and uplifts the revolutionary joy that continues to shine specifically through Black women and youth; igniting an upswell of healing through unrelenting joy. She has worked as a director with Mercury Store, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Playwrights Horizons New Works Lab, Baltimore Center Stage, Pittsburgh Classic Theatre, Lime Arts Productions, The Hansberry Project, City Theatre, and Point Park University. She has collaborated as an assistant director alongside numerous directors including Rebecca Martinez, Dustin Wills, Jenny Koons, Pam MacKinnon, Awoye Timpo, etc. She was a Robert Moss Directing Fellow at Playwrights Horizons and a former member of the New Georges Jam. Raecine holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Directing from Point Park University.

CAST

Adrian Lamont Caldwell Jr as Khosi
Daniel Shevlin as Joseph
Amanda Hunt as Tanama
Brianna Johnson as Ris
Whitley Armstrong as Caona
Calaway Swanson as Cyrus

CREATIVE TEAM

Produced by Camille S. Thomas, Renee Harrison & Jordan Powell
Assistant Directed by Jordan Powell
Scenic Design by ezekial Clare
Lighting Design by Ethan Feil
Costume Design by Sam DeBell
Fight Choreography by Luke Pearlberg
Prop Design by eric Cipriaso
Music Direction by Jhori Ahnae
Intimacy Coordination by LySaundra Janeé

Development History

The Brick Interrobang Festival Spring 2024

Folger Library Artistic Research Fellowship "Whose Democracy" fellow 2024/2025

North American Cultural Laboratory 2024

JACKLabs Fellow 2024/2025