The Ascension Plays

The Ascension Plays is a trilogy that traces the journey of a lineage of Black women whose ancestors were forcibly brought to America via the Middle Passage in 1840, having been kidnapped and transported on an illegal vessel. These women, descendants of the Yoruba gods Oshun and Shango, possess supernatural powers. Spanning from 1890 to 1940, the trilogy follows four generations of women as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of Post-Reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution, and the Jim Crow South. The plays, titled in chronological order, are Safronia’s Daughter, Children of Feral Gods, and The Witching Hour.

The Ascension Plays were a part of The National New Play Network Showcase in May of 2025.

Safronia’s Daughter

Safronia’s Daughter is the first play in The Ascension Plays trilogy, set in 1890 on the Rufus Plantation in the post-Reconstruction South. Told through the eyes of the deceased matriarch Safronia, the story unfolds as she watches over her four children from beyond the grave. Conjured back into spiritual presence by her eccentric, larger-than-life, queer son Jinx—who possesses the gift of communing with the dead—Safronia narrates the family’s journey as they struggle to survive and preserve their legacy.

At the heart of the story is Bee, the eldest daughter, who strives to keep the family’s supernatural gifts hidden while working as a sharecropper on the very land once ruled by their ancestors’ oppressors. Tensions rise when Bee’s twin brother, Fool Boy, becomes entangled in a dangerous affair with Madam Edwina, the plantation’s white mistress—a relationship that threatens to unravel the delicate balance the family has fought to maintain.

The Witching Hour

The Witching Hour is the third installment of the Ascension Plays. It is set in 1940 in Sheridan Town, Florida, inside a modest storefront owned by Pepsi, a matriarch who has long been the keeper of her family’s spiritual and emotional legacies. When Safronia’s great-granddaughter, desperate for love and security, turns to forbidden magic to secure the affections of a mysterious stranger, she sets into motion a chain of events that neither she nor her ancestors could have foreseen. The spell works—at first—but as the enchantment begins to unravel, her husband sees beyond the illusion, exposing painful truths that have been carefully hidden for generations.

As the façade crumbles, old betrayals and long-suppressed secrets resurface, forcing each character to confront the weight of choices made by themselves and those who came before them. The storefront becomes a cauldron of emotional and spiritual reckoning, where ancestral wounds bleed into the present and the thin veil between this world and the next threatens to tear apart. Amidst the chaos, loyalties are tested, family bonds are shattered and reformed, and a murder shatters what little peace remains.

A haunting exploration of love, power, and generational trauma, The Witching Hour reveals how the echoes of the past can both curse and heal the living.

The Ascension Plays blend magical realism with African American realism, weaving ancestral spirituality, historical trauma, and Black culture into a rich tapestry where the mystical and the real coexist.

Children of Feral Gods (Working Title)

Children of Feral Gods is the second installment of The Ascension Plays, which is still in development. The play is set against the backdrop of the industrial revolution, and the turn of the century in 1907. It follows Pepsi, the play’s protagonist, who is mysteriously pregnant with no recollection of how it happened. Struggling to harness her telekinetic powers while grappling with the circumstances of her pregnancy, Pepsi is driven to uncover the identity of her child’s father. The night of her daughter Raynell’s birth coincides with the arrival of a young girl. Long-hidden secrets begin to surface, revealing the true identity of the mysterious young girl and the father of Pepsi’s child.