The Blood Quilt – 22 November 2024

In the aftermath of a mother’s death, four daughters and one granddaughter come together to uphold a quilting circle in accordance with familial and cultural tradition. The Blood Quilt explores how being raised by the same mother in the same house doesn’t always lead to equal opportunities or equivalent amounts of love and nurturing. Each character embodies an example of how a strong woman can live—and also how a strong woman can hurt. Despite being of one blood, being of one family is complicated, especially at the end of the life of the one woman who held them all together. Equal parts joy and pain, the unique relationships between each character paint a picture of what it means to endure. Confusion sets in when the characters find out that their mother was in massive debt when she died and that keeping both the family home and the quilts that are the family pride is unsustainable. The sisters have to adjust their internal understandings of their mother and themselves as each successive surprise disrupts their images of the woman they thought they knew. In the end, the mother remains dead, and the sisters must reinvent their relationships with each other in the wake of all they have learned.

There were many secrets kept under wraps, and also many painful truths that were acknowledged outright. Amber (Lauren E. Banks) was mother’s favorite (known) and HIV positive (unknown). Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson) was the only one who became a mother (known) and her mother had been hiding the letters her father had been writing her all his life (unknown). Gio (Adrienne C. Moore) was the only one their mother ever beat (known) and a survivor of rape by Amber’s father (unknown). Clementine (Crystal Dickinson) had the most physical contact with her mother (known) but did not know about the mountain of debt that her mother left exclusively to her. For her part, Cassan’s daughter Zambia (Mirirai) was an activist on a journey to find herself currently interested in Islam (known) but uncertain how her family would feel when she revealed the truth of what she was to be a lesbian.

The sisters handled every rock in the boat, but not always gracefully. Out of a need to protect their own vulnerabilities, they frequently exposed what they knew of each other’s. Their lives were as the fabric on the quilts—stitched together by fragments of each other’s clothing, bonded by blood, deeply intertwined in each other’s fate, enduring in their existence but easy to trade away to preserve something greater. Zambia was playright Katori Hall’s way of showing us the perspective of someone whose cultural knowledge is somewhere between the audience member who knows nothing about Kwemera Island and the sisters whose lives are rooted in the water there. Through Zambia’s questions and observations, the audience had a liaison to finding out what we wanted to know. Zambia also served as a reminder of how, with the passage of time, what was once unthinkable (ex. selling the family’s quilts) can become noble (with the quilts in museums, your family history is accessible for the rest of the world to see and learn from). Zambia’s flight of ideas also showed the increased rarity of people who cling to and adhere to culture as strongly as the oldest sister, Clementine. Zambia moves quickly—absorbing new cultures and ideas like a sponge, and finding her place in them. She really does have Muslim ancestry. Some of the things that call to her are actually embedded deep in her blood.

One of the most interesting elements of this production of The Blood Quilt was the moments where there was little to nothing going on onstage and the audience was just listening to the water, watching the projected waves and slow light changes, and taking in the stormy moments emphasized in the design for the audience to see even though the characters were unaware of them. The island of Kwemera was a character in this story: her waters full of dancing ancestors, the storms that shook her bones, the lack of a bridge to the modern world that kept her safe and preserved, her calling to those born under her watchful eye, the absence of bodies buried within her, the songs in her heart, and the ache to return to the traditions that bind her in the hearts of those born to her. The scenic (Adam Rigg) elements of the quilts and homely decorations, the song in the rain, the beauty in the simplicity of the projections (Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew), the juxtaposition of passionate and understated sound (Palmer Hefferan), the contrasting costumes (Montana Levi Blanco) showing each character’s individuality and differences between their lives, and the light (Jiyoun Chang) that guides us on where to look and colors how we should feel… it’s a whole world within itself. This world weathers intensity, laughter, charm, and sacrifice through the women whose hearts are within it. It is mighty, powerful, provocative, and thrilling.

I attended this performance on a press pass from LCT.