Who’s That/Summer 2020
Margaret Chase

As to the poem, it literally demanded to be filmed… after the death of George Floyd and the accumulated rage, pain, anxiety, activism building up before that terrible murder and then after, a kind of horrid numbness came over me at times, when I felt disembodied… reality and realities became fungible and yet the sadness and sick feeling were always the undertone.

It had to do with being 66 and seeing the same racist machinery, bigotry, violence, surging up again and again in this country… the structural racism that so many deny… the deepest sickness our country has, and has failed to face and remedy.

When I was at the 2017 Women’s March in DC, there was an old, I mean really old lady there with some of her friends and her sign read “I can’t believe I’m still protesting the same shit!”

And the poem started when I got out of bed one morning and there were tears coming out of my eyes… and yet I felt nothing… This is so unlike me, I realized something inside was on the brink…. and thus, the poem worked itself through my mind and body. — Margaret

Margaret Chase
My background is interdisciplinary and eclectic. It is grounded in theatre and encompasses performance, playwriting, directing, spoken word/poetry, singing, writing and editing, and visual art. Our country’s legacy and practices of racial injustice and division are finally catapulting us into inexorable change. Artists have a critical role to play in this positive evolution. At the same time, the pandemic presents its own complications, but I believe that we can find new ways to approach content, presentation, and audience experience. I am committed to creating theatre that matters.

Who’s That/Summer 2020 was first performed for the Brooklyn Book Festival 2020
videography by Douglas G. Cala.