Review

"Kudzu Calling: A Call From Home"

It is May 31, 2025, and I enter the doors of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, a known home of mine. I head to The Octagon, where it is being performed, and take my seat. It is two o'clock in the afternoon. I pull out my little notebook to get ready for the play “Kudzu Calling" written by Donnetta Lavinia Grays and directed by Kevin R. Free. I looked at the playbill and after some time a quote stuck out to me. 

 “Watch and listen with your whole spirit, like when you go to worship…or like when you eat good food and drink good wine…Sing your truths…You are our rising tide, and you will raise all our boats…We cannot do it without you”  Kevin said.

I looked at the character names and saw all except one being named after trees from the south. I looked at the set and saw how it was crafted. It resembled an ethereal forest. Then the lights go dim, the announcer tells us the usual. Turn off our phones, unwrap your candy, but then they refer to us as “family”. 

The lights go down, the actors come in, and a quake coming from the speakers are felt throughout The Octagon. At that moment, I knew that this was going to be a chronicle that invites the audience to react to it in whatever way that struck them. This play takes you on a journey through the South from one of its most scrutinized members. It’s celebratory, it's thoughtful, it can be uneasy, but it opens you up. “Kudzu Calling” is about rediscovering your roots, how a home can shape our foundation, and how we can continue to build from there.

The tale follows the story of the Wanderer, played by Kanoa Sims, who comes back home to find herself with the help of avatars from the South. Each with their own stories to share and is unified through their shared connection with their place of birth, their blackness, and their queerness. The story is told in an unconventional fashion, and through poetry as their language. The language lends itself for hitting moments, but it is a double edged sword. Each character tells a story that highlights their love and struggle, and through this brings our protagonist epiphanies about their origins, and how it sent them on this path in the first place.

Nature also plays a strong theme in this piece, with the characters' names, setting, the director’s quote, and how some characters talk about the mechanisms of community. Ecosystem, which is largely a word that is associated with nature, is a connected web of plants and animals all working together to create life, but if one sector begins to diminish, it disrupts the entire system. This concept is stressed with quotes like “mind your sway” and how it states that words have power, and that they shift others. This is how dangerous rhetoric is created and spread, thus closing doors on other communities. 

The acting company of this production carries with them power and sensitivity into their performances. Oak, played by Aisha De Haas, the mother figure and leader of this soulful bunch. She ignites the crew into action, and sells the motherly instinct and the hidden depth with how she quivers with specific words and her tone when it comes to delivering lines that add good subtext to the story. 

Dogwood, played by Terrance Henderson, brings humor and force to his act. He creates moments that contain insight into condescension about how people speak about the South, and the actor demands attention from its protagonist and the audience. 

Magnolia and the Wanderer, played by Nafeesa Monroe, can be very chameleon-like in their roles and how they switch demeanors in scenes. 

Pine and Weeping Willow, played by Terrence Williams Jr. and Achille Van Ricca, sat with me the most, with how they display masculinity and work story beats. The company works together as a unit to tell this story, and they impart it to a spiritually liberating degree. It is in their movements, in their vocals, and in their bodies. The director invents this in a manner where their arcs are so much more impactful. Donnetta and Kevin send a message that queerness is not a monolith, but a spectrum of all kinds. 

The play makes you feel like you’re back in church, but this alone doesn't hold the experience together, it is helped by other elements.

Lighting, sound, costumes, and projections are crucial to this piece. Projections, produced by Edward T. Morris, presents images of churches, old southern houses, and scenery that could trigger memories of your own southern tales.

 The sound by DJ Potts continues the theme of southern qualities, and generates volumes so high and vibrations so strong it can be felt in your heart and rib cage.

Kathy A. Perkins’s use of lighting transforms each sequence and signifies how tender or broad they can be. It can go from a mystical forest from “Lord of The Rings” to a nightclub in Birmingham, Alabama in a matter of seconds.

Ramona Ward use of clothing informs the audience much about these characters in an effective way.

The set is another facet that summons a different conversation.

The set, designed by Riw Rakkulchon, has a runway that has a beginning and end no matter where you start, but with a centerpiece in the middle that is shaped like Kudzu. The set can transform on a whim due to its moveable set pieces, lights, and projections. All of these ingredients help with its astral presence, and depending on the audience, I can imagine this being an otherworldly experience, but due to its language of choice being poetry and the narrative structure, scenes and plot points don’t seem as clear. This eventually leads to an arc that ends a bit undeservingly, but “Kudzu Calling” enlightens and teaches a lesson about the importance of words, of history, and how home doesn’t always have to be something you need to run away from. 

You can always make it your own, and it needs you.