The Blood Quilt off-Broadway play weaves tale of family conflict
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall seems destined for another Tony nomination with her hit off-Broadway play The Blood Quilt, now playing at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre at New York’s Lincoln Center now through December 29. Visit lct.org for details.
Best known for her hit Starz TV series P-Valley, which will enter its long-awaited third season sometime in early 2025, the Tony nominated Broadway outing, now on tour, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical and her breathtaking play, The Mountaintop, which portrayed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s last night before his assassination, The Blood Quilt once again shows her extraordinary range and depth.
Katori Hall’s Tina-The Tina Turner Musical comes to Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre June 3-8, 2025. Visit BroadwayInChicago.com for information.
Hall received the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Hot Wing King, a comedy drama that premiered off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2020 .
The Blood Quilt features a brilliant ensemble cast of four super-sassy sisters-Crystal Dickinson as eldest sister Clementine, Adrienne C. Moore as Gio, the hard-drinking, pot smoking take-no-prisoners cop who is second in line, Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson), along with her identity-crisis daughter Zambia (Mirirai) and then there’s the self-absorbed baby sister Amber (Lauren E. Banks).
The play is set in the sister’s childhood home on a mythical island off the coast of Georgia where each year the girl’s gather for an annual quilting circle. It is at once an act of familial bonding, a confessional and a crucible of conflict.
Playwright Hall’s skillful dialogue scales to the heights. The searing banter between the siblings approaches the rhythmic improvising of a jazz ensemble riffing lines that alternately sing in celebration and sting with their uncomfortable truth. Frankie Beverly once sang “Joy and Pain, like Sunshine and Rain.” That and much more is on display in The Blood Quilt.
When Zambia shows up in Muslim garb, Cassan cuts her to the quick. “Honey, last week she wanted to be Goth. The week before that a vampire. Next week she gone be gay!”
The plot unfolds in the bucolic setting of the family’s ancient home off the Georgia coast. Imaginative scenic touches bring elements of the island’s unique outdoor setting to the fore. Spanish moss clings to the walls and rafters. A meandering coastal pool wraps around the front of the house, suggesting the sea water on which the island nestles.
Ancient quilts are everywhere- hanging from the balcony railings, casually tossed on furniture, tucked away in baskets. One stands incomplete on an ancient quilting frame. It is a silent witness to the unfinished family business at hand. The quilts, like the spirit of the sister’s deceased mother, hover over the entire nearly three- hour tour de force.
The set is draped with actual quilts that were crafted by members of the Brooklyn Quilting Guild.
Additionally, the show’s signature “blood quilt” was created by prop supervisor Olive Barrett along with artisan Kristina Fosmire, a Guild member, based on a design by set designer Adam Rigg.
Hall even manages to weave quilt-making artistry and its history into the play’s dialogue.
“The island’s name, Kwemera,” says eldest sister Clementine,” comes from “that old OLD Geechee tongue. It means ‘to last. To endure. To withstand.’ Like the Jernigan women. Like these quilts.”
Zambia later says “When y’all was telling me these stories, all the lives woven into this fabric, I just got the tingles.”
As a bit of background, the cast actually attended a hands-on class on quilting with master quilter Thadine Wormly of the Quilters Guild in preparation for the play.
Designer Montana Levi Blanco provided costumes to match each of the character’s persona. For example, Amber (Lauren E. Banks), who is sort of the prodigal sister of the group because she rarely shows up for the quilting ritual and even missed her mother’s funeral, arrives dressed in an expensive jacket and elaborate hair weave, as is befitting her stature as a Hollywood entertainment lawyer.
Lighting designer Jiyoun Chang and sound designer Palmer Hefferan created effects that suggest the tropical storm building outside as the tensions mount between the sisters inside the house.
The Blood Quilt is a family comedy-drama that celebrates Black womanhood and consecrates the concept that the act of quilting is a way of processing life’s bruising experiences and developing a sense of belonging and kinship.
Its theme is especially appropriate for this time of year, as families gather for the holidays. Normally, it is a joyous occasion but too often, old family grudges and unsettled scores emerge to cast a pall on the gaiety. Such is the case in The Blood Quilt.
Hall sets out the premise of the play from the outset. “There’s a storm comin’,'” sister Amber declares as she enters the ramshackle ancestral home the family has occupied since before the Civil War.
Director Lileana Blain-Cruz’s stage setting is a masterpiece of idyllic decadence as designed by Adam Rigg.
The Jernigan sisters arrive at the windswept cottage in high spirits. It isn’t long before it becomes a showdown.
This year’s gathering is preceded by tragedy. This is the first year that the sisters are holding the quilting bee without the presence of their mother. She died recently and, it is quickly revealed that she left behind a mess of unfinished business, both personal and financial.
When the will is read, a cascade of family secrets is unleashed, not the least of which is the fact that the mother has not paid property taxes in years, leaving the sisters to cover over a hundred thousand dollars in debt. The approaching storm suggests the intensity of the tempest building between the sisters.
The Blood Quilt is a masterpiece of stagecraft by Katori Hall. With its references of African mysticism and the intersection of ancient precepts with modern sensibilities, the play is reminiscent of the works of the great August Wilson. Particularly his plays The Piano Lesson and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. (Note: Denzel Washington produced an inspiring film adaptation of The Piano Lesson, directed by his son Malcolm Washington and starring his other son, John David Washington along with Samuel L. Jackson. The Piano Lesson is now in limited release at select theatres around the country.)
The Blood Quilt virtually erupts in a flood of emotion on stage. There’s singing, rhythmic ritual dancing, chanting and handclapping. More importantly, there is laughter among the tears.
The performers are so soul stirring on stage that some members of the audience can’t help themselves. Their reactions are immediate and heartfelt.
“The Blood Quilt is like a neo-folk tale,” Katori Hall explained in a recent interview. “You have these women who know who they descended from. They know the first slave who was on the ship that they descended from. They have pieces of her inside of their souls, yet they are living in a contemporary world with contemporary problems.
“They know that it’s important to know your heritage, but you also have to come up with contemporary solutions to contemporary problems.
“Why the stage? ” Hall asks rhetorically. “I look at the stage as a mirror. I want to see myself on the stage. That’s where my craft is focused.
” The Blood Quilt is about these four sisters who get together and this is the first year that they’re doing it without their mother who has recently passed. When the reading of the will comes to pass, there’s all kinds of secrets that come out. Things that the mother did that were right, and mistakes that were wrong.”
Hall says she wrote the play as a means of bringing out more Black audiences to experience live theatre. “This story speaks to the African American community. It’s a story that’s not only about these four sisters, but it’s about everyone in the community and what they’ve inherited from their ancestors. Both the good and the bad.
“There are emotional scars that they carry with them and this play shows how the Jernigan family deals with them.
“I feel that The Blood Quilt is a piece of theatre that creates a mirror where people can see themselves. I feel that there’s a lot of healing that ends up happening. The theatre literally becomes a Church.
“People feel like they are testifying. You hear people shouting to the actors ‘Preach!’ ‘You go Girl. Tell it!” It’s a wondrous experience to be in the theatre when that happens.”
The Blood Quilt continues through Dec. 29 produced by Lincoln Center Theater at the Newhouse Theatre. For more information on the play, visit lct.org.
