Southern Gothic, Black Woman, Magic: The Making of Middlegame
Photo by Ashley Knedler on Unsplash
As this piece is being produced, I thought it would be appropriate to provide you, the reader, and, hopefully, the audience in the future, with some background on what inspired this play. And, if anything, to help me make sense of it.
As I’ve outlined in A Journey into the Heart of Creation — See Saw Projects, Middlegame is partially inspired by Euripides' Medea.
When I first encountered Medea in college, I was in awe. This was a woman, a priestess, claiming her power in a world that sought to diminish and obstruct her.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t support the literal killing of children. But for me, Medea’s act was symbolic: a killing of innocence, but also the annihilation of a love contract shattered beyond repair, and the destruction of Jason’s bloodline as a form of poetic justice.
That story haunted me. It still does.
The ancient Greek play is compelling on its own, but what gripped me is the relevance. How women today, especially Black women, still navigate the debris of betrayal, expectation, silence, and erasure. Medea, although a mythic and extreme figure, echoes through time the fury and grief many women experience today in our modern society.
The Cauldron of my Mind:
Now, let’s take a look at the cauldron of my mind and how Medea interacts with me.
But first, to understand this alchemy, you would have to learn a little about me:
My name is Andrea. I am 43 (cough - nearly 44), Black woman.
I am the child of two splendid humans. My father, a military airborne veteran turned IBM Tech guru, moved our family from Detroit, Michigan, to North Carolina when I was four years old.
Since then, I’ve moved through (not due to the military, just jobs and life) Raleigh, NC; Holly, MI; West Bloomfield, MI; North Raleigh, NC; Boone, NC; China; Chicago, IL; and back again. But the South - with its contradictions and charms- has been my longest haunt.
Within these 43 years, I have absorbed the stories, their ghosts, its tangled and gnarled history - all to put itself back together like that of Kintsugi pottery, transformed and made new again, mended with the gilded gold of charm.
I have listened to the land’s spiritual mores and its whispers of “right” and “wrong”, its rituals of silence and spectacle. The cultural layers - I have observed, questioned, wrestled with, and what I have managed to make sense of, I have folded into Middlegame.
Enter the South:
A little background and brief history—very short, very brief history, for I am not a specialized historian of the great American Southeast. Now, most of my knowledge pulls from North Carolina, so please forgive me in advance. And although my story takes place in a fabricated town in South Carolina, the flavor and vibe of the history have enough parallels to inform the atmosphere of my play.
However, for those unfamiliar with North Carolina, here are some key points…
Okay, but first, before I begin, what must be known (and I hope we can all get on the same page with this): Native Americans were here first.
Everything after this is layered, complicated, and, at times, contested and resisted. But these are a few dates that stuck with me from school, and a few I had to find for myself.
This timeline paints a moving portrait of North Carolina: haunted, mythic, messy, alive.
For a more comprehensive overview of North Carolina’s timeline, I have provided the following link: North Carolina History Timeline: North Carolina Important Dates
North Carolina History Timeline: North Carolina Important Dates
1584–1585: Sir Walter Raleigh sends expeditions to establish the first English colony on Roanoke Island, known as the "Lost Colony."
1587: John White establishes a second English colony at Roanoke; Virginia Dare is the first English child born in America.
1590: White returns to find the colony abandoned, with the word "CROATOAN" carved into a tree. This is fodder for a whole other Southern gothic horror, but let me continue…
1663: The Province of Carolina is officially established.
1712: The province splits into North and South Carolina.
1729: North Carolina becomes a royal colony under British rule.
1789: North Carolina becomes the 12th state of the United States of America
1861 - May 20: North Carolina leaves the Union. Instead of voting to secede from the United States, as other states did, North Carolina voted to "undo" the act that had brought it into the United States, which I find fascinating.
1861–1865: North Carolina participates in the Civil War as a Confederate state—now don’t let anyone lie to you, there were slaves in North Carolina during this time, approx 331,059 slaves
1903: The Wright brothers make the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina—I’m only noting this to give context to our fancy license plate slogan “First in Flight”
1960s: The Civil Rights Movement gains momentum in North Carolina, leading to significant social changes, which we would have to map that out, but for the moment, we’re just laying down the groundwork
2000s: North Carolina becomes a major center for technology and research, particularly in the Research Triangle area.
2022: North Carolina removed seven Confederate monuments, as part of a broader movement to take down such symbols across the state.
Tendrils of the Historical Monsters of Time:
So, back to Middlegame.
What we have learned thus far is that this play is inspired by Medea, a Greek tragedy written 2455 years ago. I, as a Black woman who was raised in the South, was impacted by the sordid histories of this region of the country that informed this play.
And what I have witnessed in my lived experience, there are still rules of patriarchy, power, and supremacy that no one has written down, but still follow.
There are still fresh wounds that cry out for healing but are forgotten, left to fester through time, sepsis forming within the system.
Betrayal songs of trauma cloaked as love is sung from church pews and whispered within the hymnals of the Bible Belt South.
The gossiping whispers as we tell the tales of others’ sorrows for all to hear.
These are the guns that reach out, pointing at the back of a young black boy who pops open a soda.
These are the smiles upon the faces, cloaking the hatred.
They govern.
They write laws.
They sit on the boards and at the head of spiritual homes.
They wear dresses and suits.
Sometimes they are us.
And sometimes we are them.
I call these the Historical Monsters...
...those that reach their tendrilled hand through time, pulling at the fringes of our mind, tempting us to turn away from the light.
A monster of legacy: where bloodlines matter more than truth and virtue
A monster of respectability: where silence is safety and “niceness” is armor.
A monster of memory: Who takes the stories of the past and rewrote them to soothe oneself.
Middlegame is where I attempt to name them, not to slay them.
But naming matters. It is said that naming something is to know it, and to know it is to claim power over it.
Across fairy tales, like Rumpelstiltskin, to scripture in Genesis, we are reminded: You cannot defeat or control that which you refuse to name.
Within the context of this play, historical monsters are at work. But it is the avoidance of naming, the refusal to see, that becomes the engine of each character’s undoing.
Character Shadows
Jason, the character within the play, is a man who initially has good intentions but becomes consumed by the temptation of power and success, ultimately becoming a collection of charms and shadows.
Shanice is every woman who has lit herself on fire just to keep her house alive.
Gabriella is a testament to what happens when you survive the monsters, yet you are still too afraid to speak.
I wrote Middlegame to process…
…to make sense of the pain this country has endured, and continues to endure, as we struggle toward the other side of the light.
Until the day peace truly comes for all, the ground I stand on will remain steeped in Southern Gothic horror, as we continue pulling at the dark strands that twist through our history.
And it is through that processing, through naming, that I hope to bring, if not resolution, then a small piece of peace. A little more understanding.
And as the characters of this story give their warning song, through their lessons as they walk through the darkness, not around it, we can find the light we’ve been looking for.
