Last October, I woke up and I couldn’t move.  A sharp pain gripped my lower back so severely that I couldn’t even turn a centimeter, so I was trapped in bed – a loft bed - like a roach on its back. I was terrified, certain that it was the first stage of complete paralysis.  I keep one of those family doctor books up there, so I looked up meningitis, encephalitis, MS, and I don’t remember what else. It turned out only to be an attack of muscle spasms, and I was practically immobile for a week.

I also keep a notebook next to my bed.  I could write, so I wrote, and wondering why a woman might choose not to move led to “the date” .

That was the beginning of “some life”.  And once I’d decided to write a solo performance piece, my first thought was “no whores or junkies” because I’ve seen so many solo shows with multiple characters,  and the “black character” almost invariably is a “crack ho” or a “gangsta”.  And it almost invariably is an easy way out, because they usually stop at the superficial mannerisms - the slang, the walk - and rarely go beneath. But, as a black actor, as a black woman, I want to show something else.  I want to show how race affects me, my self-image, and how I see myself reflected in the world, but also how, so much of the time, race is not the most important thing.

But humanity always is.