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When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out

Event Overview

Location

Wallace Theater, Lewis Arts complex

Admission

Free tickets required

Event Times

  • Fri, Dec 5, 2025 · 8:00 pm Cal
  • Sat, Dec 6, 2025 · 2:00 pm Cal
  • Sat, Dec 6, 2025 · 8:00 pm Cal

The Wallace Theater at the Lewis Arts complex will be ignited with three lecture-performances that present scenes and monologues ranging from the rich historical lineage of Black American theater to a live resistance-driven narrative lecture on culture and power. Presented and performed by Anya Pearson, a 2021-22 Princeton Hodder Fellow, and Drama Desk winner Chesney Snow, Lecturer in Theater for the Program in Theater and Music Theater and featuring senior Destine Harrison-Williams. The lecture and performance are co-directed by Pearson and Snow.

Content Advisory: This production explores difficult themes of American history and includes graphic language as well as images that include sexual assault and state sanctioned murder. It is strongly advised that audience members take the space and care that they need during this presentation. Content may not be suitable for audiences under the age of 18.

This year’s When Pages Breathe series honors playwrights and poets who have resisted authoritarian narrative capture over the last century. It archives suppressed histories and invites audiences to resist erasure through community dialogue and organizing. The three performances will be enriched with a talkback and a panel discussion with renowned scholars, professors, alumni, and leading figures in American theater today. This year’s series is presented in collaboration with Princeton’s Black Theater Collective.

Video

Anya Pearson and Chesney Snow discuss their upcoming lecture-performance, When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out.

Video Transcript

Video Transcript: Snow and Pearson Discuss American Black/Out

Chesney Snow:

Hi, I’m Chesney Snow, lecturer here at the Lewis Center for the Arts in the program in Theater and Music Theater. And I’m here with the great Anya Pearson, who is a 2022-2023 Hodder Fellow who’s joining me for a lecture for “When Pages Breathe.” Thank you so much for joining me. Yeah.

Anya Pearson:

Thank you for having me.

Chesney Snow:

[Chesney Snow is lecturer in the Program in Theater and Music Theater at Princeton] So, I guess one of the questions that I would have, you know, is like, what’s really surprised you about this work that you’ve been researching here with me as we prepare this lecture?

Anya Pearson:

[Anya Pearson is a 2021-22 Princeton Hodder Fellow] That’s a great question. I would say one of the first things that surprised me is how easy the flow has been. Like, I think we work really well together. We have some great kind of shared interests, kindred spirits going on. I think another thing that really surprises me, unfortunately, is how little has changed between 1925 and what Zora Neale Hurston was writing about and Langston Hughes was writing about, and what playwrights of today, like myself are writing about in terms of being a Black artist who’s speaking truth to power and writing in opposition to fascism and authoritarianism.

Chesney Snow:

So, I mean, I’d say one of the things that’s really surprised me was the brilliance of your work. Just to give you an idea of what, we’re doing a lecture and a performance, so we’ll be performing as well with one of our students here, Destine, who’s graduating this year.

Anya Pearson:

Shout out to Destine.

Chesney Snow:

Yep. And so not only are we bringing the text and the history and the research, but we’re also performing scenes and one of the scenes that you have is “Measure of Innocence.” Could you talk a little bit about that play that you’re contributing to this piece?

Anya Pearson:

Sure, yeah, so the “Measure of Innocence” is a reimagining of “Measure For Measure” by Shakespeare. One of his problem plays. I was commissioned to adapt that play, “Measure For Measure,” through an African-American lens pre-pandemic. So at the tail end of Trump’s presidency, the first one, looking at mass incarceration of black bodies. And it was a really interesting time to be a Black woman, writing about, not only the first Trump presidency, but also the kind of lineage of the rise of mass incarceration, what it meant to be living while Black and the danger of living while Black, right? Because the play was supposed to premiere in March 2020, right before COVID. And so this was pre-George Floyd, and one of the characters in the play is actually killed by the police and is saying like, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

And so revisiting it to work on this was really challenging because it dives really deep into systemic racism, the government’s involvement in the legacy of slavery, the way in which it has always been dangerous to be a Black person in this country. But as we see right now, it continues to be not only dangerous, but also, we see the government wanting to go back and whitewash the way in which it has always been dangerous to be a Black person. And so it felt important, as we were talking about writing in opposition to authoritarianism to talk about, right, the legacy of the way in which oppression and government involvement has always been a part of the danger to Black people in this country and continues to be a danger, even though they’re trying to pretend as if, right, it’s not.

Chesney Snow:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m just really honored to be rocking on this with you.

Anya Pearson:

Likewise.

Chesney Snow:

And this series, you know, we created a couple of years ago was really about bringing pages to life, you know? And bringing great literature to life. And with what we see happening in the world today around authoritarian narrative capture and erasure, I just really wanted to look back to our playwrights and our poets and see like, how did they resist?

And hopefully that will give us a toolkit or inspiration to be able to confront the challenges that we find ourselves facing, not just in academia, but like on the street, right?

In our lives. So I hope you guys will join us for this lecture series, taking place December 5th and December 6th. The link is in the information of the Lewis Center for the Arts website. Thank you so much.

When Pages Breathe is a series that was born through a collaboration between Princeton University Library’s Special Collections and the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater and Music Theater and created and curated by Lecturer in Theater Chesney Snow. The series is dedicated in honor of the late William Noel, the John T. Maltsberger III ’55 Associate University Librarian for Special Collections, who shepherded this collaboration with vision and inspirational leadership. He is deeply missed and continues to inspire this series.

Cosponsored by Princeton’s Humanities Council.

Additional Programming

Dec. 4 Black Theater Collective Mixer

Princeton students are invited to join members of the student group Black Theater Collective for a mixer night at 7:30 p.m. in the Drapkin Studio at the Lewis Arts complex. All students interested in Black performing arts traditions and practices are welcome to join. Soul food will be served! Open only to Princeton students; RSVP encouraged.

Dec. 5 Talkback

Post-Show Talkback following the December 5 performance with playwright Gloria Majule, Anya Pearson, Chesney Snow, and Destine Harrison-Williams, moderated by Assistant Professor of Theater Rhaisa Williams.

Dec. 6 Panel Discussion

A Post-Show Panel Discussion follows the 2 p.m. performance on December 6 with alumni Kelvin Dinkins, Jr. ’09 and abigail jean-baptiste ’18, Anya Pearson, and Chesney Snow moderated by Jallicia Jolly, Visiting Scholar in Princeton’s Center on Transnational Policing and the Effron Center for the Study of America.

Dec. 7 The ForWord Collective presents “Free-For-All”

Join the student group The ForWord Collective for an evening showcasing student and community voices in their rawest form. Featuring original spoken word performances, food, & live music. Come to listen, engage and be present together. Open only to Princeton students, faculty & staff.

Tickets & Details

The show is free and open to the public; advance tickets required.

Get free tickets through University Ticketing

Reach University Ticketing by email at tixhelp@princeton.edu or by phone at 609-258-9220.

Digital Show Program

View the playbill for the lecture-performance

Photo Highlights

A person on a stage speaks into a microphone on stage in front of a projection.

Chesney Snow, Lecturer in Theater for the Program in Theater and Music Theater and Anya Pearson, a 2021-22 Princeton Hodder Fellow. Photo by Tim Sexton

Two people stand on stage and at podiums and microphones.

Chesney Snow and Anya Pearson perform in When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out. Photo by Tim Sexton

A person speaks and points with a projection behind them.

Chesney Snow, Lecturer in Theater for the Program in Theater and Music Theater. Photo by Tim Sexton

A person speaks into the microphone on a dark stage.

Anya Pearson, a 2021-22 Princeton Hodder Fellow. Photo by Tim Sexton

A person reading from a music stand as someone else in the background speaks to them.

Chesney Snow and Anya Pearson perform in When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out. Photo by Tim Sexton

Two people sit at a table and have a conversation.

Chesney Snow and Anya Pearson perform in When Pages Breathe: American Black/Out. Photo by Tim Sexton

A person stands a music stand and speaks on a dark stage.

Anya Pearson, a 2021-22 Princeton Hodder Fellow. Photo by Tim Sexton

A person speaks into a microphone on a dark stage.

Chesney Snow, Lecturer in Theater for the Program in Theater and Music Theater. Photo by Tim Sexton

Directions

Get directions to the Wallace Theater, located on the Forum level of the Lewis Arts complex.

Enter the Lewis Arts complex through the main Forum level entry doors located across from the Princeton NJ Transit Station/Wawa. All other entry doors are locked on weekends.

Accessibility

symbol for wheelchair accessibilityaccess symbol for amplified sound or assistive hearing devicesaccess symbol for open captioning, two white O C lettersWallace Theater is an accessible venue with an assistive listening system. The 2 p.m. matinee performance on Saturday, December 6, will feature open/live captioning (CART). Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Students in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.

Presented By

  • Humanities Council
  • Program in Theater

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