MIXED UP: A Black Queer Blues About Gods, Devils, and Impossible Choices

Between church and desire lies the truth. MIXED UP - where survival meets authenticity. #MixedUpPlay #BlackQueerTheater

MIXED UP: A New Play

A metafictional blues about survival

What happens when the body becomes both battleground and sanctuary? When light skin opens doors that slam shut on your soul? When desire burns like prayer in reverse and God's own image triggers shame instead of salvation?

MIXED UP is a theatrical reckoning with the mathematics of survival—how we calculate the cost of breathing while Black, gay, and holy in a world that demands you choose. Carl Richardson exists in the liminal spaces: too light for some rooms, too dark for others, too queer for his pulpit, too faithful for his flesh. This is the geography of being caught between worlds that refuse to claim you whole.

This is sophisticated theatrical discourse wrapped in the vernacular of survival. MIXED UP breaks the fourth wall to examine how Black trauma becomes performance, how pain gets packaged for consumption, how even our most intimate moments become content for others' entertainment. The characters speak directly to the audience, questioning not just their own choices but the very act of witnessing their breakdown. Who gets to watch? Who gets to judge? And what happens when the observed refuse to perform their suffering politely?

This is metafictional blues—a play that knows it's a play, characters who know they're being watched, and a protagonist who refuses to let you off the hook for watching. Each friendship becomes a mirror reflecting different strategies for surviving the unsurvivable.

At its heart, MIXED UP interrogates the intersection where colorism meets sexuality, where family love becomes family violence, where the divine and the erotic blur until you can't tell worship from want. It's about the weight of carrying other people's projections of who you should be while trying to excavate who you actually are beneath the performance.

This is not a play about being saved. This is a play about choosing to keep breathing while the world tries to convince you that you shouldn't exist. It's about finding God in the spaces the church said were godless. It's about loving yourself in a skin that was weaponized against you before you could even spell your own name.

Excerpt from Scene 1

TRINA: You know what your problem is, Carl Richardson? You sitting over there contemplating Jesus like you writing poetry, when what you need is some practical wisdom.

CARL: And you got practical wisdom?

TRINA: Baby, the caged bird sings because it has a song, not because it's trapped. But you over there trying to build a prettier cage instead of learning your song.

CARL: That's not how that quote goes.

TRINA: I'm improving it for your specific situation, honey. You can't hate yourself into loving yourself. And you definitely can't perform holiness while running from your own humanity.

CARL: Okay, but when people show you who they are, believe them. And some people show you they're trouble wrapped in golden skin.

TRINA: There we go! See, you do have sense when you use it. Now stop sitting in that lotus position like you auditioning to be the gay Black Buddha on somebody's coffee table.

CARL: "Gay Black Buddha" - Trina, you wrong for that.

TRINA: Wrong but right. Carl, baby, you been sitting there looking at Jesus on that wall so long, I'm starting to think you waiting for him to wink at you and drop his number. Lord knows you got a type, but honey, that man been dead for two thousand years and even HE ain't responding to your thirst.

CARL: How you figure?

TRINA: Because anybody who can laugh at themselves while they falling apart got the tools to put themselves back together. You just using all your energy to think instead of feel, and all your feelings to perform instead of heal. Boy, you sitting there meditating like you trying to make chitterlings zen - some things just supposed to be messy no matter how peaceful you try to be about it.

Excerpt from Scene 2

JAY: (adjusting his backpack, voice quiet but building) Work. Yeah. You know what I learned carrying this thing around every day? Weight got a way of changing how you walk. How you see the world. You start carrying something long enough, you forget what your shoulders used to feel like without it.

JAY: But then sometimes... sometimes you meet people who been carrying their own load so long they understand the weight. They don't try to take it from you or tell you it ain't that heavy. They just... walk beside you. Help you remember what it feels like to not carry it alone.

MOTHER: (with maternal concern) Working yourself into the ground won't help nobody you counseling.

Excerpt from Scene 3

CARL: (To himself, voice like music finding its own mathematics) What is this inheritance I carry? This light skin that opens some doors while closing others. This desire that burns like prayer in reverse.

CARL: You made me light enough to pass through doors my darker brothers can't even see. But every door I walk through feels like betrayal. Light enough to be favored, dark enough to be fetishized. Beautiful enough to be desired, broken enough to be disposable.

CARL: So here's my last question, Lord. The one that sits in my throat like communion wine gone poison: If this is the flesh you gave me, if this is the desire you wired into my bones, if this is the love you coded into my DNA... why does every breath feel like evidence I should never have been born?

For Industry Professionals

These excerpts represents a small portion of the complete work. Theater professionals, directors, and producers interested in reading the full script should contact me directly through my website. Please include your credentials and production history. Due to the sensitive nature of the material and to protect the integrity of the work, I carefully vet all script requests.

MIXED UP is available for licensed production. Unauthorized use or reproduction of this material is prohibited.

Dedicated to Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and all the ancestors guiding my writing.