In the Blood’s Hester La Negrita is a penniless mother of five condemned by the men who love her, in this play hailed by The New York Times as “…a work of art. You will leave thrilled, even comforted by its mastery.” Hester turns to former lovers, friends, and the institutions meant to support her, only to be spurned by them all with devastating consequences, in this new production directed by Obie Award-winner Sarah Benson (An Octoroon).

This play is being produced in tandem with Suzan-Lori Parks’ Fucking A, directed by Jo Bonney, as part of the event we are calling The Red Letter Plays, a unique opportunity to see two plays by one writer in dialogue with each other. To find out more about why we are presenting these two riffs on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter together, click here.

A chorus stands in judgement of Hester, La Negrita, the protagonist of Suzan-Lori Parks’ In the Blood, directed by Sarah Benson and loosely based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (playing, along with its sister play, Fucking A, at the Signature Theatre). Saddled with five children from five different fathers, Hester (the wonderful Saycon Sengbloh) is living in dirt poor conditions, reliant on a broken welfare system and a friend’s shady business transactions to keep her and her children alive. The chorus sputters and shames, complaining that they/the government shouldn’t have to pay for someone like Hester, a woman with no husband, no skills, and not a penny to her name. They may as well fashion her a red letter A. When it’s apparent that Hester can barely feed her children, let alone herself, she starts looking for her deadbeat baby daddies to see if they will pony up. Hester’s first love, Chilli (Michael Braun), with whom she had her first-born, Jabber (also Braun), has been seen around town by her double-dealing friend and sometimes lover, Amiga Gringa (Ana Reeder). There’s also the soapbox preaching Reverend D. (Russell G. Jones), father to her youngest, Baby (also J …Read more