Young, gifted and Black : journey through/to a PhD in white-ass Austin, Texas

Young, “Gifted” and Black: Journey To a PhD in Whiteopia is a “Biomythical”¹ play that focuses on daily experiences in the life of a Black Brazilian woman named Semente. Semente is a 23-year-old pursuing a PhD in Black Studies at The University of Whiteopia (UW). New to this strange land and institution, Semente recounts her experiences of moving through spaces that perpetuate and create new forms of systematic oppression as a person marked as “object” and “abject”. Depicting moments of both subjugation² and fugitivity³. YGB provides a glimpse into the everyday realities and “colored contradictions” of Black life in the wake of the “new-neo-liberal” landscape of late and post-Obama hipster-gentrified US cities. This play deals with issues of gender, sexuality, race, migration, capitalism and many other themes that emerge from a Euroheteropatriarchial society.