Welcome to the Myth & Marrow media resource center. For press inquiries, interview requests, or review copies, please contact JAE GAYLE at jae@rethinklabor.org.

Featured Performers

The Story

Operating under the ruthless logic of Presiding Algorithm HOLMES-14, the United States government puts Black women on trial, charging them with systemic liability, civil disobedience, and theft of labor. Armed with the “old technologies” of their ancestors, defense attorneys Queenie and Isis Washington wage a high-stakes war for survival, interrupting the sterile digital matrix through a continuous loop of ancestral invocation, song, and historical reckoning.

🏛️ A Courtroom Where the Audience Holds the Verdict

MYTH & MARROW is not a passive theatrical experience; it is an active exercise in civic responsibility. The production completely deconstructs the traditional boundary between performer and spectator by embedding the audience directly into the legal machinery of the play:

The Civic Collective: The audience does not merely watch the trial—they are the jury, formally designated as the “Civic Collective” by the court’s algorithm.
The Active Bailiff & Foreperson: At the play’s rise, a volunteer from the audience is pulled directly into the action, donning a costume overcoat to serve as the courtroom’s working Bailiff. Later, the jury must select a Foreperson from among themselves to stand and deliver the final judgment.
The Interrogative Voir Dire: During the jury selection sequence, the slow, rhythmic ticking of a metronome echoes through the theater. Defense counsel moves through the crowd, confronting audience members with searing, unexpected questions about rules, boundaries, and historical burdens. The audio tracks pause dynamically, hanging in the silence while the spectator speaks their truth.
Deliberation & Branching Destinies: At the climax of the trial, the audience is given five minutes to openly debate the charges. A microphone is passed through the crowd as spectators clash over the verdict. The outcome of the play is entirely non-deterministic—the real-time decision of the audience triggers three completely distinct, automated endings programmed into the court’s servers:
- Innocent: Authorizes an immediate historical archive rewrite to restore the omitted truths of Black women.
- Guilty: Commences an chilling, systematic “demographic phase-out procedure.”
- Hung Jury: Condemns the demographic to a state of permanent probationary surveillance pending further data extraction.

🪵 Rooted in Black Folklore and Ancestral Ritual

When the sterile, pre-recorded projections of the White male Judge and Black male Prosecutor attempt to systematically erase Black women from the historical record, the defense fights back using the profound, indelible systems of Black folklore, spirituals, and conjuring rituals.

Cleansing the Matrix: The trial is repeatedly disrupted by “Unlicensed Sonic Interference”—soul-stirring, a cappella renderings of traditional spirituals like “Wade in the Water” and “Religion is a Fortune.” These songs act as a spiritual virus, actively glitching the AI servers and breaking the state’s stranglehold on the room.
Somatic Affidavits & Ritual Possession: To counter the state’s clinical, weaponized statistics, Queenie and Isis transform their bodies into living vessels. Through intensive, localized movement and choreography, they invoke the spirits of historical Black women, allowing them to take the stand posthumously:
- General Harriet Tubman Davis: Defiantly demands her un-issued Civil War backpay, reframing her espionage and the burning of plantations not as vigilante chaos, but as masterful, uncompensated military command.
- Harriet Myers: The 19th-century abolitionist who ran an Underground Railroad stop out of Albany, NY, shattering the capitalistic definition of “work” by honoring the unpaid, exhausting mental and physical labor of Black women.
- Edmonia Lewis & Willie Mae: A brilliant, 19th-century sculptor who survived a racist collegiate mob collision, and a 15-year-old Jim Crow-era kitchen worker who chose righteous rage over compliance, joining forces in a staggering, blues-infused duet, “Put Scandal on My Name.”
Hoodoo Counter-Mapping: The defense literally carves out an autonomous zone inside the courtroom. Using salt boundaries, incense, sage, and sanctified water, they erect a spiritual fortress. Within this safe space, they drape “body maps” across the stage—visual folklore artifacts that absorb the historical trauma and triumphs of the women who came before them.
The Manifestation of Justice: The production culminates in the physical arrival of the Spirit of Justice. Manifesting not as the classical, blindfolded White caricature of Western law, but as the eternal African deities Oya, Maat, and Ayelala, she inhabits the space to dissolve the American social contract entirely, reclaiming absolute, unalienable sovereignty over the Black female body.

📊 Fast Facts

Book, Music, & Lyrics: Jenae Gayle (Jae Gayle)
Current Production Cycle: 2026
Development Organization: Labor Pains Collective
Official Website: http://rethinklabor.org
Media Contact: jae@rethinklabor.org
Setting: United States Northeast Quadrant District Court Server (Docket 1619)
Core Characters: Queenie Washington (played by Jae Gayle), Isis Washington (played by Sajaira Hudson), Judge Presiding Algorithm HOLMES-14 (played by A.I. Avatar), Prosecutor Application Powell-151 (played by A.I. Avatar)

Jenae Gayle is available for interviews, panels, and features.