What are the rules of being Black? Who decides, and who enforces them? What happens when those questions are asked aloud—with a mostly white audience looking on?

Scenes with Black Folk is a bold, genre-bending ritual play that blends satire, surrealism, and raw vulnerability to explore how Blackness is performed, policed, and pushed to the edge. Four “somebodies” take the stage, confronting the absurdity of racism and the weight of self-awareness in spaces where being seen is never simple.

Through a series of fragmented, heightened, and darkly comic scenes, the performers wrestle with identity, history, and the pressure to represent. They slip between characters, tones, and timelines—exposing how the performance of race can be both mask and mirror. The line between actor and audience is never secure. Neither is the line between truth and survival.

Unapologetically intimate, uncomfortably funny, and deliberately disorienting, Scenes with Black Folk is not just a play—it’s a confrontation. A ritual. A refusal to explain. And an invitation to witness what happens when Black people stop performing for someone else’s benefit.

Written and Directed by Joy Nesbitt
Produced by Sophie Cairns, SHITE Productions