Photo provided by Naptown African American Theatre Collective (NAATC)
A GRIMY PATINA of ice and salt covers every outdoor surface, and the early February air is so biting it seems like Mother Nature is holding a grudge. It’s a dim, bleak evening, almost 6 p.m., and a tide of cars ebbs and flows down Illinois Street as people head home from the city’s center. Every so often, a single car peels off and pulls into the parking lot across from Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, a lone figure here and there exiting each car and darting across the street and into the building at the corner of Illinois and Walnut. While everyone else is rushing to their couches and dinner tables, this crowd is arriving for a marathon, four-hour rehearsal of Naptown African American Theatre Collective’s latest show, Zora Howard’s Pulitzer Prize finalist play, Stew, which runs March 13–30.
In a large back room inside the Phoenix, a table of food is set up to the side—not just snacks but full-on dinner. The production has provided chips, a veggie plate, wings, drinks, and cake. One crew member brought a pot of vegan spaghetti.
The atmosphere is easy as the cast and crew fill their plates and settle down to begin, so it’s a surprise to learn most of them don’t know each other. A few, like wig designer Asanta Foster and set designer Everett Clayton, have been with NAATC through multiple productions. But this is most people’s first experience with the company, which debuted in 2023 and is ending its second season with Stew.
The crew and cast go around and introduce themselves. NAATC founder LaKesha Lorene, in her first time directing a show for the company, gives a friendly welcome. Dramaturg Celeste Williams describes the background and air of the play, reciting a poem that evokes the familiar feeling of a traditional matriarch’s kitchen, its smells and flavors (biscuits, greens, black-eyed peas, oxtail, sweet potato pie—and, of course, stew), and all the conversation, gossip, and drama between women that happens there.
That is what Stew is about—everything that gets cooked up in a kitchen between four women throughout a Saturday: the small talk, the reminiscences, the little quips, the commiseration, the jokes, the annoyed sighs, the laughter, the tears, and the fussing over each other’s cooking skills. Through the story of Mama, her two daughters, Lillian and Nelly, and Lillian’s daughter, nicknamed Li’l Mama, as they filter in and out of the kitchen preparing for an event, Stew offers “a realistic look at everyday life,” explains Lorene.
“When I read Stew, I was struck by how relatable and grounded the writing was. I laughed out loud. I reflected. I felt like, at different times, some characters and conversations were my own family at home in the kitchen,” she says.
Lighting designer Tim Dick describes how the play’s lighting will mimic the path of the sun as it progresses past the kitchen’s windows from morning to evening. Sound designer Maximus Keyes plays original compositions such as a bright, gospel-inspired clip of electric guitar that represents the sun rising and the matriarch Mama coming into the kitchen and a deeper, more downbeat track that accompanies an uncomfortable, tense conversation. “[The music] won’t overpower the work that you’re doing,” Keyes tells the actors, “But it will complement what you do.”
After the discussion of the stage’s look and sound is out of the way, the four cast members delve effortlessly into a table read of the script, their back-and-forth coming completely naturally. Moments of humor and wit are interspersed with yelling, talking over each other, and cutting each other off—either in cacophony or harmony, depending on the mood. At times, it’s like walking into a conversation already in progress, but repetition and context help fill in the backstory that comes without exposition or explanation. Especially outstanding is the way these mothers, sisters, and daughters mirror each other, exhibiting inherited behaviors. This all gives a sense of candidness and familial comfort.
Lorene chose Stew to close out NAATC’s 2024–25 season because she felt it was a story in which anyone could see themselves. “The play touches on so many important topics—tradition, generational trauma, sisterhood, Black joy, the loss of loved ones, and more. These are experiences that everyone can relate to in some way,” she says.
Lorene founded NAATC in 2022 after deciding she wanted to do something about the lack of opportunities and equity for Black performers and crew in Indianapolis, as well as the absence of work by Black playwrights on Indianapolis stages. NAATC was created with westside community organization Flanner House as a fiscal sponsor and given a residency at the Phoenix as one of several small theater companies hosted by the center. It is the first Black-owned theater company in Indianapolis to be affiliated with the only professional union for actors and stage managers, the Actors’ Equity Association.
“Being a full-time actor is kind of like perpetually looking for a job, and most of us spend part of every day looking for auditions for plays you are ‘right for.’ … The prospect of working for a new, [Black-owned] Equity [theater] was exciting,” says Renée Lockett, a Chicago-based actor who plays Mama. She has appeared in The Chi and the Disney Channel’s Saturdays and played Dorothy Brown in the Comedy Central sitcom South Side, as well as Alma in Emperor of Ocean Park starring Forest Whitaker and Grantham Coleman.
Two of the three shows from NAATC’s inaugural season were Indiana premieres, and the third, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, had not been performed in Indiana in almost 40 years.
NAATC also gave opportunities to first-time director D’yshe Mansfield on Detroit ’67 and homegrown talent Xavier Jones, who was in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Judy’s Life’s Work and is soon to star in Jesus Land on Peacock. NAATC employed over 60 artists in 2023–24, raising over $245,000, which was given directly back to the artists.
NAATC’s goal is not only to create paid opportunities for Black theater professionals and amplify the voices of Black playwrights, but also to forge connections within the community.
“We tell stories that everyone can relate to in some way, with the goal to help people from all walks of life from all over the community come together and see themselves in the Black bodies onstage. Representation is so important, and I knew that in our state, through art, we can make an impact that is long-lasting by curating storytelling that not only educates but humanizes, which is at the heart of what theatre is supposed to do,” Lorene says.
With community partners Flanner House, Ujamaa Community Bookstore, Butler University, the Athenaeum, Dance Kaleidoscope, The Sapphire Theatre Company, and the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, NAATC also hosts its Education for All program, made possible through the 16 Tech Community Grant.
The program offers free classes in theater education in a number of areas, including acting; nonprofit development; legal tips for creatives; theater and film production; retirement and wealth planning; and costume, wig, set, and lighting design.
“Our instructors [are] locally and nationally based so our students [have] the chance to learn from nonprofit professionals and business owners like Nikiya Mathis, the 2024 Tony Award winner for hair and wig design,” says Lorene. “Through this program, it is our hope to add to our creative workforce by equipping students with the skills needed to be hired to work at any theater in the city and all over the country.”
Stew premieres March 13 at Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center and runs through March 30.
Fans can support NAATC by volunteering or becoming a yearly or monthly individual donor. To connect, visit naatcinc.org.
