What to Send Up When it Goes Down NYC Reviews and Tickets

88%

(15 Reviews)

Positive

93%

Mixed

Negative

Members say

Resonant, Ambitious, Intense, Profound, Relevant

About the Show

"What to Send Up When it Goes Down" is a community ritual created in response to the deaths of Black people as a result of racialized violence.

As lines between characters and actors, observers and observed blur, a dizzying series of vignettes build to a climactic moment where performance and reality collide, highlighting the absurdity of anti-blackness in our society. Through facilitation and dialogue we must decide how to cope, resist, and move forward.

Member Reviews (15)

Confusing, Disappointing, Fluffy, Indulgent, Resonant

See it if If you want to participate in the show, chant,write, scream etc. Some good acting in it. If you want a much different kind of piece.

Don't see it if Stories tell sometimes half truths at best. If your white, you feel uncomfortable and are made to be. If you dont like over the top rage.

Thought-provoking, Resonant, Relevant, Motivational

See it if ..to participate in a moving group-circle experience to honor and remember those killed in racial shootings in the U.S. A call to help

Don't see it if you don't like participatory theater

100

Absorbing, Must see, Profound, Intense, Thought-provoking

See it if you are genuinely interested in engaging with ritual, confronting the nature of oppression, and making yourself small when necessary

Don't see it if you enjoy escapist entertainment Read more

Powerful, Engaging, Uplifting, Resonant, Enchanting

See it if you need to process today's racial climate; to understand safe spaces; to be a non-black ally; to experience compelling performances.

Don't see it if you want pure escapism; you really hate audience participation; you don't want something "intense." Read more

Ambitious, Edgy, Great acting, Great staging, Resonant

See it if you’re not afraid of truth, you don’t know how to process recent events/climate

Don't see it if you’re easily made uncomfortable either physically or emotionally.

Relevant, Intense, Ambitious

See it if You like participatory theater Care about police violence against black people Want to scream your rage about the loss of black lives

Don't see it if You don't want an intense participatory experience about race and the killing of black people

Devastating, Intense, Must see, Profound, Masterful

See it if You care about humanity, want to do something about the epidemic of racial violence and misunderstanding, or want to be validated/educated

Don't see it if You can't take some audience participation, even for a profound cause ...if you don't want to cry or change how you feel about today's world

100

Absorbing, Ambitious, Clever, Aleshea harris is god

See it if You want to have a moment of collective healing, if you want the chance to be in a room full of Black people celebrating themselves.

Don't see it if You're uninterested in Black people and I really mean that. Read more

Critic Reviews (4)

"If 'What to Send Up' is a receptacle for the rage that is part and parcel of life for many African-Americans, a piece that encourages its audience to respond with cathartic yells and tears, it is also shaped by a rarefied theatrical intelligence...Harris has a gift for pushing the familiar to surreally logical extremes...If you’re a lover of theater, looking for signs of fresh and original and in-the-moment life on the American stage, you need to see 'What to Send Up.'"
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"We pass a talking rock around a participation circle; we share a primal shout. For some, this will be nourishing, even if the therapy dynamic is an awkward fit with its theatrical surrounding. You don’t usually pay for church...The members of the ensemble, thrumming with electricity, perform quick burlesque exchanges or drop suddenly into a percussive communal dance. The comedy is broad, but it works because director Whitney White keeps it fierce and fast."
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"The writing itself is richly musical; the stark poetry and driving rhythms Harris mines in language, enhanced by repetition, lend power to 'What to Send On' from the beginning...Most of the characters are recognizably modern and less specific in design, functioning more to represent the dilemmas faced by today’s African-Americans...As the text points out, 'What to Send Up’ is also, and ultimately, celebratory—and cathartic."
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"This is theater that sets out to do something...A rapidly paced, often eviscerating series of scenes that almost overlap as one takes over from the next, returning again, sometimes as a clear continuation, sometimes as repetition with difference...It carries that slightly unfinished quality common to many devised performances...The more conventionally theatrical central scenes display moments of superb writing and are performed with ensemble-driven polish by the cast."
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