Black Stage Matters: Episode 2 enters the museum, but not quietly.

In this episode, host Josiah McCruiston sits down with Deborah Asante, director and Indianapolis theatre architect and founder of Asante Children's Theatre, and TJ Rowley, Artistic Director of the Indianapolis Black Theater Company and Black Light, for a rich conversation on George C. Wolfe’s groundbreaking work, The Colored Museum, written in 1986 but still powerful today.

Together, they explore the play’s biting satire, cultural memory, theatrical brilliance, and ongoing relevance. More than a discussion of a classic, this episode opens the door into the artistic process: how directors listen to the text, honor the ancestors, challenge the audience, and build a production that is both historically rooted and urgently alive.

Through conversation, reflection, and behind-the-scenes insight, this episode asks what it means to stage Black identity without flattening it, to use humor as both scalpel and sanctuary, and to create theatre that refuses to let our stories be trapped behind glass.

This is a conversation about process, power, legacy, and the responsibility of Black artists to hold the guard while still making room for the future to speak.

Black Stage Matters begins with a charge: Black theatre is not simply entertainment; it is testimony, strategy, spirit-work, and cultural preservation. In this first episode, we step into the sacred responsibility of protecting the stories, stages, artists, and communities that make Black performance a living archive.

Rooted in Utu, the ethic of humanity and communal personhood, this conversation honors the belief that I am because we are. We explore what it means for Black artists, storytellers, and cultural workers to stand in truth, integrity, and accountability to the people.

Guided by Ifá, we listen for the deeper wisdom beneath the work: the ancestral, spiritual, and emotional truths that shape why we create and who we create for. Through Hekima, we turn toward collective wisdom, asking how Black theatre can solve problems, build futures, and speak with clarity in a world that often misunderstands its power. And through Itan, we remember that every stage is built on story, legacy, myth, memory, and the footsteps of those who carried the culture before us.

This debut episode is an invitation to gather at the crossroads of art, ancestry, community, and responsibility. Black Stage Matters because Black stories matter. Black artists matter. Black audiences matter. And when we hold the guard, we do not just protect the stage. We protect the soul of the people.