- [Sandra] This is comparative politics, Malik.

- Lincoln didn't sign the Emancipation Proclamation out of some bleeding-heart desire to end the institution of slavery, many of my resources back up that claim.

- I'm not denying that claim, I'm saying there are loopholes in your overall analysis of the so-called modern-day plantation in the workforce and it's parallel to slavery during the time of the Civil War.

- The themes of this play and the themes that we are seeing play out in real time, in real life, it feels like something that's within my reach and accessible in terms of being able to do something about it.

- This is some modern-day peculiar-institution-type (censored)!

- Malik.

- Excuse me.

- I am not one of these people, like, "Oh, not another slavery story," I'm not that person, I am one of those people that are like, "What else to the slavery story?"

Because, like, I'm not gonna believe that we were just sitting and suffering, and not agents of our own freedom.

- Hold me one of them muskets and see what I could do.

- Wait a minute, I told you, don't touch it.

(crickets chirping) (Malik groaning in pain) - Just wanna see how I feel!

Real mighty, like I could gather me a bunch of kin folk and walk right off the plantation.

(Malik laughing) - Dominique, how did you come up with the idea for "Confederates?"

Why have the time travel aspect?

- I wanna make sure that it's not just sitting in the moment of enslavement, that I juxtaposed it to the moment of now.

Ultimately, I decided to set it at two institutions, the peculiar institution of slavery and the educational institution of higher learning that has roots in the peculiar institution.

Let's not be subtle, let's be real in your face about it, and let's be really overt about what has and has not changed between the past and the present.

- And I'm just another tolerant negro professor that's absorbed in the system of institutional racism.

That's what you're saying in those distinctions.

- I always have this moment right before the opening where I think about what Sandra's experience is going to be throughout the show, or the scenes, or what her day in this institution is going to be like, it's almost a physical-ization of what often black women are dealing with in this country and in this world.

- You know, as being in a black woman's skin all my life, I know what kinda stuff comes at me in my real life, so I...

It's the same kinda stuff that's gonna come in my plays that center black women, and especially this kinda play that's kind...

It's quite radical, I think it's my most radical play.

It defies genre, so it's like, "Is this a comedy?

Is this a tragedy?

Is this...?"

"What is this?"

It's all and none.

- If we really wanna get real, let's get all the way real.

- What attracted you to be a part of "Confederates?"

- Knowing that they were doing a Dominique script.

That was enough for me, but then, when I read it, something innate just sort of opened up for me.

- There are people in our lives that when they ask, you say, "Yes," because you trust their integrity, you trust their mission, and Dominique is that person.

- Goldie, I couldn't have asked for a better director, especially because of her relationship with the play, and she knows it so well, she was around when it was being developed.

- She was extraordinary, she was absolutely extraordinary, she created a culture in the rehearsal room of support, of creativity, of play.

- I am a professor, so I had... We were having class, we were having lecture in our first week of rehearsal, and my cast is brilliant in the ways that they not only took the information that we came into the process with, but then, they did their own individual research, and they were coming back with ideas, and they were coming back with realities about these people.

It's a lot of real history that's in our process, and even though we don't name it on stage, it's the anchor for all that you see on stage.

- Down to who these character archetypes could be, who they were based on... People...

Historical figures that have, like, similar circumstances.

- I want freedom by my own deliverance, I don't want no blood on my hands.

- I really was interested in how slavery is portrayed, and why I was so adverse to watching movies and plays about slavery.

Why don't I want to go to the theater to see a "slave play?"

So that was kinda, like, my research, or like, what rubbed me the wrong way about those, and what makes this story for me different?

What's different about this play is that Sara is on her journey to freedom, she gonna get free.

- Hear, O Israel, you are approaching the battle against your enemies today.

- Whitney and Rebecca, did you guys bring your personal experiences as a black woman to your roles?

- Yeah.

(people laughing) Yeah, it was there, it was there.

I...

So thank goodness that I'm not in Whitney's shoes 'cause for me, I'm like, "I don't know what it's like to be a slave," I don't have to have, like, this impression of what I have to be, I can just be a black woman in these circumstances versus, like, I look over in 2018 and I'm like, "That is so close to my reality, I don't want none of that," 'cause I went to a undergraduate program and a master's program, I spent a lot of time at institutions as one of the only black women, or there were three of us and we were all pitted up against each other, and I still have, like... (indistinct) About that, so I would just, like, watch y'all from a distance and be like, "Thank goodness I am in the 1800s, thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness."

- This play looks at two different kind of violences, macro-aggression and microaggression.

So in the past, there is a macro-aggression of, like, somebody's gonna burn a cross on your lawn, they gonna grab you and hang you by a tree, that's a macro-aggression, it moves fast and it's overt, and in the present, there are 100 little microaggressions, like death by a thousand cuts, you know?

- You think, as a black woman professor, I have it easier than black men, is that's your implication?

- The demographic of my professors is a fact.

- The message lands in such a direct way that leaves you questioning what your participation is in the institution, but not only that though, they gonna laugh.

- [Rebecca] They gonna have a good time.

- [Whitney] They are going to laugh, there is... We talk about some really deeply-felt things and some serious subject matters thematically, but there is so much levity at the same time.

- You're gonna take away something unless your ears are not here, your eyes are not here, your body is not here, you're gonna leave with something, I know you will.

- We, in this process, the process is freeing.

When you are doing a play about liberation, my goal is for us all to be liberated in process, and so, the commitment is not to the applause or the laughs, the commitment is to the transformation.

(audience applauding)