Belly: An American Love Story at Black Box Theater, CCSU

Belly travels across time to tell the stories of Black women’s experiences of reproduction past, present and future. It is an intergenerational voyage of Black woman/motherhood, transpiring through the mediums of word, song and dance and is based on ethnographic interviews and research conducted by Dr. Haile Eshe Cole with Black women in Texas. Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls”, the work is written for a small, six-member cast and is structured as a choreopoem in three parts. It begins by looking back at the histories and context of Black women’s reproduction as experienced through the transatlantic slave trade. It continues by exploring intersecting themes such as pregnancy and birth, maternal health disparities, loss and various other facets, both good and challenging, of Black women and mother’s experiences. Finally, Belly ponders the idea of liberation and justice as the characters dream radically about the future and world that they would like to see for themselves, their families, and communities. In the end, the central theme arising from the work is love. While it highlights the complicated histories and current challenges experienced by Black women/mothers in the United States, it also centers the legacies of love, care work, support and resistance employed by Black women in order to survive.