This story was originally published by ArtsATL
“Flex,” a drama about a girls basketball team in small-town Arkansas in the late ‘90s, examines the stress that young Black women face on and off the court as they dream of going pro.
Told in the structure of a four-quarter basketball game, the play marked its co-world premiere last year at Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta and TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Now, “Flex” is set to open July 20 for a one-month run off-Broadway at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in New York City. Lileana Blain-Cruz, a Tony nominee for 2022′s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” directs the play. Erica Matthews, an Atlanta native, stars as the lead character, Starra Jones — the same role she played last summer in Fayetteville.
“Flex” playwright Candrice Jones grew up in a small town — Dermott, Arkansas — where basketball reigned supreme. She played the sport in high school and later in college. It was a bit like the film and television series “Friday Night Lights,” she recalled, only with hoops instead of goal posts. Jones considered herself fortunate to play at a time when the WNBA was just taking off and women’s basketball was finally getting national attention and respect.
Yet she learned a harsh truth when she ran into a high school rival in 2002 while attending the University of Arkansas at Monticello. The rival mentioned that Jones’ high school team could have been more successful if someone on the squad hadn’t gotten pregnant every season and quit. Jones didn’t want to believe it but soon realized it was true.
The knowledge stayed with her and eventually led her to write “Flex” in 2016.
Credit: Courtesy of Lincoln Center
Credit: Courtesy of Lincoln Center
The play reached the Atlanta stage last year as part of Theatrical Outfit’s Made in Atlanta program, which focuses on developing new plays.
“Flex,” which is Jones’ New York debut as playwright, is also the first time that a play originating at Theatrical Outfit has made it off-Broadway.
“It’s rare for a show to come directly from a Southern theater and go straight to New York quite soon afterward,” said Addae Moon, Theatrical Outfit’s associate artistic director. “It shows, to me, how the landscape is changing in terms of new play development, and people are realizing that there is something very important about the specificity of place and how that impacts storytelling.”
Credit: Marc J. Franklin
Credit: Marc J. Franklin
Matt Torney, Theatrical Outfit’s artistic director, said that “Flex” is a play “very much of the South.” The playwright was “adamant that the premiere had to be at a Southern theater,” he added.
Jones, who has written another play set in Arkansas called “Crackbaby,” which was nominated for a Wasserstein Prize, said the sites of its first staging were important to her.
“When you take a Southern play and stage it in the South, you are staging it in its roots,” she said, “and that makes a huge difference on the actors and the directors” because it offers a “level of comfort.”
Regardless of its origins or specific story, “Flex” was written with a universal message.
“Basketball may not be a sport that everyone plays, but it is a sport everyone can relate to, as well as having a dream and wanting to go hard with that dream and making mistakes along the way, which is what most of the characters do,” Jones said. “Starra is a kid with a dream given to her by her mother, and she has to figure out a way to realize it — on her own terms. That is what the play is really about.”
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Jim Farmer covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival. He lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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