2026 undergraduate thesis presentations

Hi everybody. Uh it is a real pleasure to be here. Um uh my name is Fatin Abbas. Um and I had the pleasure and the honor uh of advising Allure Sahu's thesis which he will present today. Um the mass murderer. I had the pleasure of meeting Allure in my writing longer fiction class in the fall of 2024. And from the very beginning I was really impressed by his talent as a writer um by his seriousness and his commitment and his real sort of discipline. So it was uh an even greater pleasure to spend the last year working with him on the mass murderer which is a darkly comic comically dark uh crime novel set right here in MIT. Um, and amongst the many strengths uh of the thesis, I think are just uh this really amazing Lur's incredible talent for uh characterization and voice and descriptive detail and I'm really hopeful that he will continue with the writing and um yeah and I have no doubt that there are really wonderful things uh ahead for him. So with that I present to you Allure Sah. >> So hello everyone. I was just introduced but uh in case you forgot I am Saku. I am one of our writing majors this year and this is my thesis the mass murder a novel in progress which I'm hoping to finish in the medium-term future. So >> to point it at your computer. >> Oh. >> Oh, no worries. [laughter] It's a bit of lag. >> So, let me first tell you what it's all about and the journey that I took to get to this novel. So, I would argue that some version of this novel has been brewing in my head since the senior year of high school. Um, obviously I had not gotten to MIT at that point in time, but I think at that point I had this goal of writing some longer form of fiction if only because my attention span at that point was really short and I think I wanted to prove a point that I could write something longer and that it would be cool and it would be engaging. Um, then spring of my freshman year, so spring 2023, I took a class called genre fiction workshop with Sharian Luitt, who couldn't be her here today because of an urgent conflict. But that was really interesting to me because up until that point, I had kind of segmented all of the fiction that I was reading into strict genre buckets like this has to be romance, this has to be fantasy, this has to be science fiction and so on and so forth. Um, but in that class, we really explore pushing the boundaries of just mixing and matching the best parts of what you like about each genre and creating your own sort of thing. Um, in that class specifically, I tried to write a chapter of a YA novel that was set at a boarding school, but had these science fictional elements, and it was like really rooted in chemistry, which is the natural science that I was and still really am into and love thinking about. And then it like really clicked for me that I didn't really have to pick a single lane to stick to. Um, I had taken uh Sharian's science fiction workshop fall 2022, so my freshman fall. And I liked elements of science fiction, but I didn't necessarily enjoy the idea of making sure that my science was rigorous for like hard science fiction. And I also didn't necessarily enjoy the vibes of fantasy where I would have to like come up with a magic system and an internally consistent set of rules for that that was both plausible but also interesting. And I like murder mysteries and the concept of them, but at the same time, I was really worried about like leaving enough red herrings for the reader, but not leaving too many red herrings and making sure that didn't fall into any tropes or anything. And then at the same time on like the fourth hand, I wanted to do something that was inspired my own experience, but I explicitly did not want to do autofiction or something like that. And then I realized that I just didn't have to do any of that. And it really crystallized for me in that writing longer fiction workshop because up until that point I'd mostly interacted with a lot of writers who like they basically act as their own journalists going out like interviewing people like gathering data basically like doing a bunch of research on this topic that they're really interested in and then going and writing about that. But then I realized I can just draw a lot more from my own experience and then use that as my launching point instead. and it didn't necessarily need to be um autofiction at the same time. So that was the start of the mass murder which I refined in that workshop and over the past year as my thesis. So if I had to call it something, I think it would probably count as a realistic crime campus novel and a murder non-mstery, which is a big mouthful. So, I think it would be a lot more helpful if I just read you my abstract instead. >> Okay. So, obviously novels don't typically have abstracts in a traditional scientific sense, but I thought it would be cool to kind of analyze my book from the outside like that versus doing a synopsis or something. So, I'll just read on the screen. Um, it's there for reference. So, in this realistic crime novel excerpt, protagonist Aaron Miranti, a sophomore at MIT, navigates the tensions between academic success, chronic illness, and perceived public image. He embodies the dark side of MIT's motto, men's at Manis, mind in hand, weaponizing his intellect to engineer calculated chaos. Specifically, Aaron is a textbook psychopath who stops at nothing to exact cruel retribution against his enemies, whether for his own pleasure, as a means to an end, or both. Initially buoied by his hatred of his ex, Catherine, Aaron serves as a speculative case study about how much emotional, physical, and psychological damage a single spitefueled individual can inflict on a social ecosystem. So, it's certainly took a lot darker of a direction than I ended up anticipating. But what I was really inspired by was uh two novels I've read in workshops. One was this novel called Homefire by Camila Shamzi, which is a retelling of Antiggony that I believe is set in either the late 1990s or the early 2000s in uh London and the UK. So, that was really interesting to me because I went into the novel knowing exactly how it was going to end. And it was the journey that was really interesting for me and it didn't bother me that I knew what the end was going to be like because I knew it was inspired by Antiggony which I had already read. Um, and another novel that I think was also really a big inspiration for this even if it's not necessarily similar as surface level is actually Milkman by Anna Burns. Just because that is such a stream of consciousness novel. I would highly recommend at least reading the first chapter. It like gave me a headache and I had to take a lot of breaks to finish it. But it was very very um enlightening just in a sense that I realized that I could kind of just start by just doing whatever I wanted and if it ended up landing with people, I didn't necessarily need to worry about it looking like some other piece of literature and it could just stand alone as its whole own thing. So I think that was one of the works that I've read that really gave me the motivation to sort of take a leap and write something that I wouldn't necessarily have written otherwise. Um and then I think like behind all this in high school and middle school I read a lot of Animal Farm. And um that was also a big inspiration just in the sense that I think it's really interesting to just follow a person who you know has these evil motivations and just see what comes of it without any sort of redemption or anything like that. So this was a bit of a difficult thesis to write just in the sense that he is a psychopath, right? And it's hard to write a psychopath because you need the reader to be sympathetic or at least in the at the very least interested enough in the character to keep on reading. Um, and like I wanted his cruelty his cruelty to other people to feel inevitable to him, but also totally horrible and not like indefensible to people on the outside, which I think is a difficult thing to do um without falling into a lot of tropes. And at the same time he also deals with chronic illness which throughout most of the novel he refers to as the condition with a capital C. Um to him it's his one weakness in the world like he views himself as God's gift to the world and this is the one thing that keeps him from being um some sort of demigod. Finally I just wanted to talk a bit about the structure. So, it is actually written from a first person POV and twothirds of the chapter are from Aaron, the protagonist's point of view. One/ird are from Catherine, his ex's point of view. And that was a craft decision I made actually relatively late. At first, it was almost totally from Aaron's point of view. But I think it's hard to ground the reader just from that one perspective, especially because it's so out of distribution and weird compared to the normal person. And just to be clear, Catherine also has her own problems as well. But I also wanted to emphasize that everyone in this novel is complicated and Catherine, just by virtue of being the ex of a bad person, is not innocent and a quote unquote good person. So, we're going to read an excerpt of my novel now. So, I was thinking of actually printing it out for you all so you could follow along, but I actually went to Professor Nick Montfort's poetry reading recently, and I tested out this excerpt that I was I'm going to read for you now then, and I think it actually landed really well when people had no idea what the next line was. So, I'm just going to do that for you, and I think it's short enough that you'll still be able to follow along and hopefully not zone out. Mhm. >> And for context, this first excerpt that I'm reading is from the very beginning of the novel. So, you don't actually need any context. Just listen along. I'm horizontal on my bed, which is in my room 113B, which is in the 113 suite, which is on the floor dunster 1, which is in the dorm Dunster Elliot, which is on MIT campus. I bounce my stolen tennis ball against the popcorn ceiling about a dozen or so times with an emphasis on the or so since I stopped counting. Each throw mercilessly stones one of my several enemies whose portraits are taped to the ceiling on printer paper of course since we get free printing credits at print.mmit.edu. [laughter] The bullseye is Catherine, my ex. She loves spreading rumors and she's stupid enough to get caught, which is the worst of both worlds. Around her is the ring of freshman year weirdos, including a 20-year-old freshman who semidated a 15-year-old freshman, the younger sister of a friend. The outer rings are more distant enemies, some of whom aren't exactly enemies since I'm asically indifferent towards them, but it's fun to inflate your enemy count. After all, I have to save my neural mesh for more critical matters. Rosemary claims I'm psychologically torturing myself by waking up to a dartboard of enemies that stare at me while I sleep. I call it self-improvement. When I want to goof off, I know that my enemies are watching. Like an elf on the shelf, but more sinister. Plus, when I'm mad, I can pelt them with tennis balls and hope that I voodoo injure them in real life. Still horizontal, I glance over at the big red folder of medical information sitting at my desk marked with dozens of sticky notes. Oh, the tennis ball misses my hand and hits the corner of my glasses, which fall off my face, which fly off my face and crash onto the floor. I curse, hop out of bed, and pick them up. That's the sound of letting your guard down. For the fourth time or so, with an emphasis on the or so, since I've stopped counting, I sit at my desk and flock through all the generic cancer information just once more for nostalgia before I shred it in the dumpster Elliot library downstairs. This is written for an intellectually deficient audience with a dose of legalisms. Talk to your doctor. Consult a specialist. It always implores. Also, pictures of some old woman in Amumu cradling her oxygen tank. Her helplessness pisses me off. She reminds me of my aunt. Maybe she'll end up on my ceiling. I toss the pamphlet and folder aside. Here's what the nononsense peer-reviewed metaanalyses all said. 8020. 80ish% chance I was functionally cured. 20-ish% chance I'd relapse the next 5 years, in which case I'd need chemo, which is almost always curative but grueling. The best type of cancer to have, but still cancer. In my chair, I lean back and tease the angle of no return. The enemies on my ceiling enter my periphery. They certainly couldn't know. They'd regurgitate some well-wishes for my health before sinking their fangs into me. I'd destroy them all the same, but not without a fight. A piric victory. 8020 odds. There's a plan for both cases, positive and negative. Plans with blackup backup plans that account for people's fuckups, including my own. The plans are perfect because I am imperfect and I know it. But when I'm imperfect, no one knows. I set my alarm for tomorrow and close my eyes as my guardian devils smile from above. So, I hope that gives you just a basic sense of the sort of things going around in our protagonist's head right now. Um, so I want to leave time for the second excerpt. Um, so for this one, uh, which I think gives a really helpful insight into how he thinks about his transactional relationships with other people. The only context you need to know, um, is that he's in a hospital right now. First, I get fuzzy socks that I couldn't wear because my feet were strangely sensitive after chemo. Not in a ticklish way, in a pins and needles way. I put those aside. Second, I picked up a knitting kit, which I think I saw in the clearance aisle at some chain a while back. Still, it's cute, except that my fingers were always itchy and restless, even pre- chemo, so I probably wouldn't have fun with that. I set that aside on top of the socks. The last gift is an adult coloring book, which I could technically use, but staying inside lines is boring. I love crossing lines. Anyone who knows me knows that. I put it next to the socks and sewing kit. I pick up the card, a generic get well soon that was meant for broken arms and legs, not the condition. I open it up and I see about a third of the space is filled, which is funny because the people who did sign wrote really tiny, expecting that a bunch of other people would sign. Not the case. I read through them and they are sweet, but so are snow cones and I don't like snow cones. I don't recognize some of the names at all and not just because of chemobrain. I just don't. Funnily enough, the ones that wrote the most, spewing hope and well wishes were the ones I knew the least. One of my weirdo great uncles signed the card, too, which pissed me off. I closed the card, took a picture, and tossed in the trash. Yet, I posted it to the extended family group chat expressing thanks because that's how you maintain your reputation for thanking people for trying even when they barely did. I forget that my extended family knew about the condition since my parents blabbed. Thankfully, they're far away, old, and relatively offline. I take comfort in knowing that if I ever need a kidney, bone marrow, or liver, then I have a lot of prospects I can potentially pick organs from. I'm biracial, so perfect organ matches are harder to come by. So, I think that is probably most of what I can read without going over time. And obviously, I don't I want to have time for the other two amazing individuals here. But I wanted to end this off with a few thank yous to the individuals who helped make this happen. U many of whom are in this room today. Um, so first of all, I obviously need to thank Professor Fatten Abbas, who not only was my thesis adviser and my workshop uh, professor for writing longer fiction, but I went ahead and did a rough count. I think over the course of the past year, she has meticulously edited and left comments on hundreds of thousands of words of my writing so far, including sometimes when I would submit things like slightly late, which I am very very thankful for. So, I think we deserve like another like round of applause. Um, other thank yous go to, sorry, let me just flip flip through this real quick. Um, Shian Luitt, who I talked about again, she had an urgent conflict here today, but I would not have had my mind blown by her genre fiction writing workshop if she hadn't taught it. So, [laughter] very, very thankful for that. Um, thirdly, I would like to thank Khloe Garcia Roberts, who is sitting in the back. She taught advanced poetry workshop, which was a class that was so good I took it twice, um, two or three semesters apart. And what I think was really awesome about that is that she always takes her classes to the Woodbury poetry room. And the first time that we did that, it kind of blew my mind in the sense that it finally clicked for me that I have free will to explore the literary scene outside my bubble. And like kind of as a result of that, I've been inspired to go to and drag my friends along to cool book talks, whether they're at Harvard, like reading poetry for the Harvard review, um, attending open mic night at the Canab, going to cool book talks at Trident, and just in general. And I've met so many cool people as a result of that. And I think actually that class was the inspo for me to apply to literary London as well. So very very thankful for that and for your continued support of Brune and just like student literary initiatives on campus as well. All right. And fourthly, I would actually like to thank Diana Henderson and all the people affiliated and friends of people in literary London. I think taking that class, which for context is a month-long immersive class where you read about English authors and then visit places related to them in London. So I think I would definitely want to thank you for reminding me that art, literature, and history aren't just abstract, but they're fields with tangible real world impacts. I think visiting London and seeing the Koenure diamonds and seeing the Elgen marbles, which we always hear about in the news um because people are always grumbling about the British and their grasp on those. But then actually being able to see it in person, was like a totally different experience. as well as reading Wordssworth's composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3rd, 1802 on Westminster Bridge. Um, that was all very helpful and I think it really helped me understand the value of immersion and I think I liked to incorporate part of that into my novel especially because it happened at MIT. So, I've gotten to talk to a lot of people, visit a lot of the settings that I literally write about and I think that experience as well as the friends that I made through Literary London would not have happened without that. So, I just wanted to thank you for that as well. Um, and then finally, groups of people that I would like to thank. They range from my living communities. So, Burton 2, um, and Connor 2 within Burton Connor. Thank you for always being supportive of me and my literary pursuits, regardless of what direction they seem to take. This would also not be possible without your support through both the good times, but also especially the bad times. So very thankful for that as well. And of course, I wanted to thank my family who I saw was on the Zoom. Um, for some reason, all three of them were individually on different accounts, which I think is really funny because I know they're all in the same place right now. Um, but regardless, I wanted to thank them because this would not I would probably not be at MIT without them, of course. So, we'll give them a virtual moment of and I don't want to go over time, so that's all I will say. But, um, yeah, my list of acknowledgements is incredibly long on my thesis page, so I would encourage you to check that out once it's officially published. Um, and yeah, with that, I think we we've concluded my thesis reading for this year. Thank you so much, questions if anyone has questions for Laura about process or the piece. >> Yeah. Uh where can I go to read the rest of the story? Um that's a great question. So once it's in the CMSW archives, you'll be able to read about 25,000 words, which I estimate would be probably between 1/3 to one half of the final product. And I do plan to work on this after. Um, so this is definitely a project that I want to see eventually published in print. So stay tuned is what I would say. >> Stay tuned. >> Yeah. >> I wanted to know um, in terms of your process of writing this, what was kind of like the first step? Was it kind of storyboarding or was it designing characters? Like what was your first thing that you were kind of >> Yeah. So I think for me the vague inspiration if I had to say well I think the piece of media that really clicked for me was Breaking Bad and among among others um and it really got me thinking about how if I designed the most evil person I could how much damage could they do? So I think I started from the characters and then sort of simulated them in my mind to see what sort of story they would play out and yeah I think the focus was on Aaron and then the sort of people that are his victim/c collateral damage sort of arose out of that. >> Yeah. >> There any notable places at MIT that show up in the story? >> Notable. I mean they do walk along the infinite a lot but I would say I don't know. I mean, I think Aaron is just the type of person who's able to inflict so much calculated damage regardless of where he is that you almost forget where he is and you forget that he's like legally not able to purchase alcohol, but able to come up with these convoluted creative schemes. Um, but yeah, it spreads from fictionalized like dorms to dorm row to other like places on campus and even Boston and Cambridge and Somerville. So, kind of jumps all over. Yeah. >> Uh, do you have a favorite part to write? >> Favorite part to write? Um, I think I would say that my favorite part was a scene where Aaron and his current situationship are currently just hanging out on a roof cuz they snuck onto said roof. And for context, Aaron really wants his situationship to forget something. So his solution is that they get really, really drunk and then he just hopes that his situationship forgets about it. And then he has this very cursed thought at the end of their interaction which is just okay my situationship is stuck on the roof. I read a psychology paper that if you wake up really dazed then you forget you have you're more likely to have amnesia about the previous night. So then his solution is to just lock his situationship up on the roof overnight. And his really really really convoluted and dark reasoning is that oh um he's really rich and he has these fancy cashmere socks so like he probably won't get frosted. [laughter] So I think it's just really interesting to take some of the like coolest best qualities I know in people and just totally invert that and just see how humorous it can get. Yeah. And I think that's like one of the prime examples. We have a a not question but a comment in the chat online that says, "You're a rockstar allore. I love the scene in the room with a dart board of enemies. I felt transported. I cannot wait to read this." >> Thank you. Yeah. >> Hard agree. >> Thank you. >> Hello everyone. I am Kim Regusa and it is an honor joy. It has been an honor and a joy to serve as Ariel MCU's thesis adviser this year. Um, I I wrote a little introduction, so I'm going to I'm going to read that. Um, in Kumba, Ariel McGee has created an alternate world, a world which floats just beneath our own >> in which people of African descent can find solace, find themselves, find each other. Told as a series of monologues and dialogues framed by imaginative, atmospheric staging, this dramatic work combines performance, speculative fiction and oral history. It is a work of great beauty and depth. A Womba lives shimmering beneath the waves in the blue stage lights in the halting vulnerable voices of the characters in their longing and reaching for one another. Um, I present to you Ariel McGee Kumba. Beautiful, beautiful book. >> I'm Ariel. So, sorry. It's like that's good. [laughter] >> I'm Ariela um introduced me. Um this story has been it's been floating around in my head somewhere after sophomore year. Um but I didn't start to really develop it until this year. And it existed in a lot of stages. At first I really wanted it to be a novel. Um despite despite professor G tell telling me it should be a play. I was like, "No, it has to be it has to be a novel." And as I tried to work on it, it just got further and further to being a play. And so I finally gave in. I was like, "Okay, I'll make it a play since that's really what I've written the most while I've been here." Um, and so the story, it kind of revolves around this world of Kima and this family um, who has interacted with this world in whatever way and how they have responded to it after their experiences there. And so since this is a play and it's meant to be heard and performed, I'm just going to do a reading for the most part of two different scenes. And I might skip a little bit just for it to fit into time. I'm not an actor, but I will try to differentiate the voices so that you can tell who is talking period of time. And if I go over, please cut me off. Okay. >> I think you'll be fine. >> Okay. Scene one. The stage is dark with shallow white light from above. Coming from somewhere below, somewhere the audience cannot see or access, is a bright blue light. Above the blue light, there is a bridge or elevated platform. The sound of water lapping and retreating is audible. Amari walks slowly onto stage with a bag on his back. He looks tired and upset. As soon as he walks on, a sound that could be laughing or crying starts to mix with the sound of the water. He sits in the middle of the platform/bridge. From there, he pulls a pair of white clothing, a cowry shell crown, and an old worn portable recorder out of his bag and sets them on the ground. He begins to step out of whatever clothes he walked on stage in into the white clothing, fixed his hair, and placed the Cowie Show crown on his head. His movements are slow and listless and nostalgic. He's savoring the motions. Right as he begins moving, a projection starts to play behi starts to play behind him. Amari does not break through the projection. It is clear on Amari's face that he is hearing what is playing from the projection. In the projections are young Amari and Salom. Young Amari is crying and trying to self soothe while Salom comforts him. It's okay, baby. It's okay. Young Amari remains unmoved, curled in Salom's arms. I know that right now it feels like you are all alone, but trust me, baby, that's just right now. It's not forever. One day, one day, you can have your night away. You can find your people. [snorts] You just have to wait. What if I don't? You will. How do you know that? I can see it. Your father told you about Kumba yet? About what? About Kuwa? No, my mama. She used to say that when two energies meet, they birth a new spirit, a new energy. Like how me and your dad, we collided and made you. And when they say that, when we when we were brought over here way back during slavery, you remember grandma talking about that, right? Namari nods, still curled up in Saleom's arms. Soom smiles. Good. Good. Well, they say when our energy, our people's energy, when it met the energy, when that land met water, when that boat hit that shore, when we got pushed out that final door, it birthed Kuwamba, this this magical living land, free. Free from suffering. Free from the weights of living here in this land, in this country not built for us, where we could be us. Where we could be free. in Kumba. She watched us from the shadows of her water fight and suffer and bleed. And she decided she decided that she'd gift us for one night. And whenever night she thought we'd most need it, the ability to come join her on her side of the waters. And so one night the life of all our people brought to these shores, we go to lay our heads and wake up in the waters of Kumba. And from those waters you'll rise, pushed up by those of us lost to the waters, clothed in earth and starlight to her swampy shores. And from there you will be stripped, stripped and washed until you are as bare as the day you were born and released into our city, dressed in white, surrounded by people of all ages, all manners of living, and you will be off. Some people, some people will join the dancers, hopping, sliding, shining, feet moving faster than lights or slower than warm molasses. Others will sing loud, quiet, soulful, somber, joyous, full and large. Some will join the kids in games, kids double dutching, hopscotching, playing Miss Mary, and chasing the light. Some will join the adults sitting in the corner, claming, slamming dominoes, placing spades, passing bills and beers and jibes. Others will join the elders sitting, trading stories for stalls, knowledge for freedom, noise for quiet understanding. Others will sit with the babies nestled in nurseries, feeding them milk, soothing their cries, tears in their eyes. Some will hop into the kitchen, mixing and frying and peeling and folding, pouring out food from mac and cheese to shrimp and grits to pound cake to greens and black eyed peas to people passing by. Others will return to the water, watching the moon, patching fish, tossing stones, laughing with the with the spirits within. Some will wander the city, taking in the sights, dipping in here and there, out just as quickly, eager to know as many parts of the city as they can in one night. Others will quickly leave, sitting on Columbus shores alone, nothing but the swamped water and reads. Some will do both. Others will sit in the alley the whole night, deciding everything of one small thing is better than small bites of other things. Some will slip below the water and sink into the world below. Others might decide to leave the earth and step into the sky and fly. It doesn't matter. Columba, it's a place where you can do anything, be anyone, so long as you're free. You You step into yourself there, be born in a matter of hours into something that would have taken you years otherwise. For one night and one night only, you are as much yourself as you could ever be. Free. And in the morning, the morning after, you wake up in your bed again, aching, hollowed, renewed. New purple band itched into your skin, marking your journey, knowing you'll never you'll never feel that weightless again. Young Amari squirms in Som's arms. What is it, baby? How do you know all that? I saw it. I saw it when I went. I saw it in my friends. I saw it in my family. When I look at you and Ashanti, I see you all there smiling, laughing, dancing. I see y'all there. And I see Salom's eyes drift away from young Amari into the direction of wherever Amari is on stage as if she is seeing through the projection onto the stage and seeing what Amari is doing right now. And we can see on her face that she's devastated. Young Gamari cradles Salom's head in his hands, mimicking the way she was soothing him earlier, and wipes her face with his hands. Salom turns towards him and smiles. "What do you see, Mommy?" Salom doesn't answer. She mouths something, but neither young Amari or the audience able to tell what the word is. They sit holding each other in silence, wiping their eyes, and trying to make themselves look more presentable. Amari on stage is done getting himself ready. He stands on the edge of the platform/bridge and stares out at the blue light for a bit before turning to look straight at the audience. The projection of young Amar disappears. A younanti and a shocki take his place as they look at Amari with two very different expressions. after she saw us after. That's the first scene. Now, I'm going to read a bit from a different scene from later on in the play. Amari and Darnell walk on a stage together from opposite sides of the stage. Darnell sits in a leather recliner on one side of the stage while Lamari sits in a dining room chair on the other side of the stage. An old and worn portable recording mic reches from Amari to Darnell. The cord excessively and exaggeratedly long. There is a window that hits between them with blue light shining through it that their no looks out of. What do you think of when you think of Kuwamba? As soon as Amari says the word Kumba, Darnell's back tenses and his hands curl, clenching and unclenching, while his face remains blank and his eyes remain locked on the window. He shakes a bit with each breath, but he's still able to breathe quietly enough that all that is heard is silence after the question. He clears his throat three times, each stronger and louder than the last, before he takes a deep breath and exhales the word pain. His body untenses with a bit with the word, but he begins blinking a lot, eyes not moving away from the window as his mouth curves before flattening. curves before flattening. Curves before flattening in a circle. In a cycle, Amari sits in the silence with him, waiting for him to continue, well aware of the dangerous edge Darnell always set on towards shutting down and breaking down all over again since Salom's death. After two minutes of silence, his blinking slows to normal pace and his hands peel out from their fists and back to clutching at the armrest of his chair. He lets out a quiet sigh and Amari knows he is ready to continue. Okay, can you go more into why you associate crumble with pain? Dell wipes his hands over his mouth with his hand a few more times before nodding and inhaling, twisting his head down even as his eyes remain locked on the window. I know that y'all young folks find it very exciting and whatnot that y'all trade stories and show off a couple bands in your arms, but y'all ain't been around long enough to see what happens afterward. long time afterward. And it's easier. I imagine it's easier nowadays to come back. Y'all got a lot more freedom. Y'all got a lot more space. But I remember back when I was coming up that going over there was like a death omen. I mean, sure, there'd be some people who came back and, you know, they went on off to become singers or writers or artists or they ran off from their families to go chase some dream and they'd make it. They'd make it there. But most people, most people, they'd wake up and walk themselves right on over to the liquor store on the corner or run into the arms of some drug dealer. They made it easy back then. They was looking for those of us who crossed back then. They'd see that mark on people's arms and say, "Well, there's an easy target. There is someone who'll be looking to escape." Remember my mom telling me and my brothers to cover our marks when we came back so she wouldn't be finding us stoked up at some alley on the way home one day. Who is this day you're talking about? who was looking for people coming out. Darnell laughs, coughs, then sniffs. Uh, you know, all the usual suspects and all them, you know them, them white folks who brought that to us. They did that on purpose, you know. They gave the to us on purpose, knowing it, it was easy for people like us to get hooked on it. Ain't nobody black who ain't looking for an escape. They ain't know about Kamba. No, sir. But we made sure to keep hush about that. But they saw that people with those bands, it always took one hit for them to be addicted, even if they didn't fully know why. And then when it had it sucks in us, it was our own people picking us up. Dell griefs hard and wipes his eyes and looks down at his lap. And I remember remember watching people at the school getting into all that. And I remember people getting tore up in their own houses when them white folks started raiding us looking for the they put there. Some of them boys, they died before I even saw their bands, but they was buried with them. So, they must have gone on their last night. I wonder if they saw them boys sleeping, purple starting to bleed onto their arm. And they Darnell turns his head to the side and places his hand in his hand popped up against the armrest of the chair, breathing heavy, he clears his throat and sniffs. My own my um my little brother. He got caught up in all that foolishness, too. Remember the day he came downstairs with his spand on his arm and the look in his the look in his eyes. I had never seen him so haunted. Scared. He was so scared. He let my mama see. We shared a room and he couldn't hide it from me. He refused to ever tell me what he saw. But he was different after that day. Quieter. He'd look at us like he was seeing through us. Sometimes he'd touch a part of our bodies and rub it as if he was making sure it was still there. He'd wake up in the night screaming. And when I go wake him up, he called me another name, asked me what time I was from. Remember one time I woke up to him sneaking back into our room, pissed, drunk, and talking to himself. He crawled into bed with me and held me and told me he could see my ancestors. He could see my pain. And he pet my head, saying, "He's sorry I'm dying. Sorry you're dying. Sorry, we're all dying." And I knew I knew it was the beginning of the end. It wasn't a surprise when he died. Coked up in his apartments. Even after all that warn my mama gave us, he still ended up there. He didn't care. He didn't care about the damage, the danger. All he cared about was when he was drunk, he was away from there. And when he was high was back in Columbomba, like he could go back. He could control it. I raised that boy. You know, my mom died and your grandpa was off off doing what's best for him, free willing, and all that stuff. I raised him. I worked my ass off to pay for his place when grandpa kicked him out and I held him through the night and fed him when he was sick. I had to buy his coffin. Your grandpa refused to. He wasn't very focused on us at that point. Only himself really. He never understood that people were falling to that stuff like that after coming back. And he never he never liked me and Donnie that much. So when he died, he didn't didn't even come. He I didn't talk to him for a long time after that. for your grandpa will ban me death in a different way. He was alive but dead to us or at least dead to me. And all grandpa cared about after coming out was himself. And I I didn't he didn't tolerate. But yeah, Darnell attempts to collect himself. Through the next part, Amari stands following the core of the recorder. It gets closer and closer to Darnell as he understands him more. seemingly unconscious of this. What do you mean earlier when you say control it? His visions, whatever he saw there, he couldn't stop seeing whatever it showed him that had him covering up all the mirrors in his house like he couldn't stand the sight of who he was no more. I'd never been too excited to go to Kamba, but after Danny died, I never wanted to go. And you explained the the fallout people's visits. It's so different from how grandpa talks about it. My dad grew up in a different time. Things were more loose. White folks ain't like us, but there was so much more freedom in black spaces. You could go and run off and be someone new and someone wild. He found the right places and still survive when he was coming up in the 30s. And when he went in and out of Columbbo in the 60s, in that time he felt a bit invincible with Malcolm and Muhammad and Fred and all that that change. Black people could be anything then. Or at least we thought we could. But then white folks shut that down. Shut us down. Tried as hard as they could to delete all that I'm sure things are great for him and his folks crossing over back then. But we ain't there no more. We're not in the 80s anymore either. No. No, we ain't. People grab a bit of freedom again. Not as much, but some. But I'll never stop seeing those purple bands as a mark of death. Especially after your mother. Darnell breathes deeply and looks off to the side, blinking rapidly. What does mom have to do with this? Darnell doesn't answer. Just sits in silence again, back in the present, but refusing to turn towards Amari. Dad, what does mom have to do with this? What What um do you know about your mother's about her about her that she got into a car crash, got thrown off a bridge in the collision? She she uh your mother went to Kumba when she was in her early 20s. Everyone on her side of the family did. A lot of people in her family went came back and ran out to chase their dreams. I thought your mother was like that before. She came out. She traveled around the world, country to country. Charming people in that way she does. Such an easy smile she had. So deceptive. We met when she was visiting the city and we saw each other and we knew that a part of us was lying in the other. And that was that. She was very open about her time there, but I didn't want to hear much about it. I don't want to know any more about that place than I have to. But she was very insistent on talking about these visions she had after coming out. It scared me, you know, reminded me my brother. She become my best friend, my soulmates. And I was so I was so scared I'd lose her like I lost him. But uh but if she tell me about her travels, I thought she was safe, but she was okay. I thought she'd chase whatever it was when she realized when she crossed when she was going to place to place. Little did I know she wasn't chasing anything. She running away. But was she running away from she she her family was very religious, you know, grew up in the Bible belt going to church every Sunday. She was in Sunday school, gospel choir, praise dance team, all that for years. seems so strange only being in certain aspects of of religion with how connected they seem to be to Kamba to spirit stuff to dreams and all that. I don't know that's why they always went around that time or they always ran afterwards. I don't know what your mother thought she'd find going all around the world but she ain't find it. I think though that maybe she's looking for a place where she felt loved and it lasted where she ain't feel weird for being who she was liking liking who she liked in that time. It was a hard time to be who she was. Well, with everything going on with the disease and all that. Don't know why she ever came back here. She was looking for love. But she found me and I loved her and I got her. Maybe because I was the same looking for that same thing. And we found in each other but in nobody else. Nobody else was able to stick around very long at least. Sure, she found community and all that. I don't think she ever found the love that she'd been looking for, running from. I think I think that Do you think that made it harder for her? Maybe that she found it in one person than if she found it in none that it hurt more knowing it was possible and not getting it than not knowing it was possible. Do you think I don't understand what you mean? What made her so weird? Why was she looking for love? She was, you know, she liked. Fel mouse woman but doesn't say it. Refuses to say it. They sit in silence for a minute. A clip of Salom looking at younamari. The commiserating look projected behind them. You said you said that you saw pieces of each other and the other. That you guys are best friends. That you were the only one who are you that are you gay? Darnell doesn't say anything. He just sits there, hands running over his lap and back ram rod straight. There's a look on Darnell's face, caught and uncomfortable. The projection changes to show not only Salone looking at young Amari, but Darnell as well, uncomfortable and ashamed. Amari looks at Darnell, flicking from anger to sadness at the fact that his dad couldn't even say the word for Salom. Couldn't even gesture to it for himself. What What does this have to do with mom's death? Their nose startles as if he forgotten what they'd been talking about. He pauses for a bit, rubbing his hand on his lap, trying to remember where he left off. Oh, right. You're um your mother. She She never stopped having those visions I mentioned earlier. She said she would look at people and see them, see them in Colomba, see how they looked with with nothing, looking at them and holding them down. And I believe her. I believe my brother, too. But I really believe I I believed her. It was hard not to the way she'd stop and stare at people sometimes. She'd do it for you, too. She'd come to me crying sometimes, whispering to herself by what she saw you look like over there. I think it made her worse that sadness, that grief, cuz she could see the people who could have been more. Could see how they could have loved each other, loved her. And I think it made her hate herself a bit more too. She was sad for all those people when she was running, too. I think part of her part of her miss too wanted to go back. That's the danger of a place like that. It looks all looks all cool in theory, but it's only one night. And you got to come back and never return. I ain't ever met somebody who went to ain't want to go back. Problem is, this road ain't ever going to be as free as it was over there. Never. That's why it kills us. That's Um that's the end of my presentation. I'm going to say thank you again to Professor Gusa for her help during this project. Um, and I want to say I want to say thank you to Sh Professor Sheran Luitt who is not here as Laur said, but she was also my major advisor and was a big help for me the past few years. So, I want to thank her as well. Um, it's powerfully embodied work and we really see and feel these characters, their gestures and their hearing their breath, right? There's the the movements that they make. We can see and I wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about your experience in theater and dramatic writing here at MIT and how you came to this form with the project. >> Yeah. Um, so I had actually I went to like a performing arts elementary school. So I kind of theater was one of the classes I had to take as a kid. Um, but it was always on the performance side. I never did anything backstage or like production or writing anything until I came to MIT actually. Um, the first writing class I took was a playwriting class, fundamentals playwriting with Ken Urban. um before I even knew I was going to do writing. And I think I've since then I really got involved in the musical theater guild here and with the theater department I help out with some of their projects sometimes and I've done a play. I realized every year I've been here, um, even when I wasn't taking a class, and so even though it hadn't been anything I'd done before coming here, it really became the main form that I wrote in while I was here, even despite the other classes I took. And I think it just came naturally to me in a way that other forms didn't. Um >> because I think maybe because before that poetry was what I wrote a lot and I think that comes across a lot in the way that I write. Um and I really love dialogue which is why you suggested I write it as a play because I tend to write like a lot of dialogue and then I'll have like action but it kind of reads like a stage direction even though I'm trying not to have it look like one. And so um I didn't know what the story of this was going to be. had the idea for the world, but I didn't know what the story was going to be. I'm really a discovery writer. I can't plan too much or I will lose interest in the story. Um, so I started writing it just knowing the world. And like I said, it came out mostly in dialogue and like really long check chunks of action that read like stage directions. And then I had to change it um so that it was a collection of oral histories. Um, so it was like a collection of oral histories from this foreign place, but it's so it's still nonfiction. It's still fiction, but it's written like it would be a non-fiction story in that world. But the form was kind of weird, I guess, in the way that um the formatting was, especially cuz I wasn't as familiar with it because I'd only really gotten into oral histories in like the last semester or so. And so I finally was just like I need to well I need to finish it but also it keeps like it seemed like I kept getting pushed towards making it a play anyway. So I just I just gave in and it really changed a lot after it became a play. And I think it really I can't imagine it not as a play now that I've made it into one. >> And you combined them all. They are all there in in this world. >> Yeah. Um, can you talk more about the world and where that idea came from? Yeah, I mean I'm Yeah, I'm very curious. >> Yeah. Um, so the world is this world called Columba. Um, essentially in this world or I guess in this universe there is this alternate world that every black person visits from one night of their life and they can never really return to it. And it's kind of the idea of this world is it's kind of supposed to be this place um inhabited by people who never experienced um like slavery, colonization, imperialism, racism, sexism, all of those things. And they kind of got to be whoever they wanted. So these expectations don't exist there. And so these people, they go to sleep and they wake up in this world and they experience these world and these people have no reservations or judgments towards them. and they really get a chance to, I guess, investigate themselves and realize who they really are, but then they come out afterwards back into the real world where they can't just be whoever they want without anyone judging them. And it tends to be really hard on the people who experience it because it's it's really nice in theory to have this world where you can be whoever you want, but then when you have to return, it can cause a lot more problems than it solves. even though internally it's does a lot more good than harm. And the inspiration for it was I saw this video. It was a series of photos actually of like young black teens uh cast in blue lighting um to the song um tattoos by Sadday um with the the quote underneath from Moonlight that in Moonlight black boys look blue. And that kind of inspired this alternate more this alternate world where they could be free like cuz everyone's really happy and like they they look very free in the pictures. Um and initially it wasn't going to be this thing where they come back and they're miserable. But thinking about it I was like there's no way that you come back and you're not miserable at least for a little bit when you have to return to what the world is today. Sure. Go ahead. Uh, I really am captivated by what you were saying. Um, I was curious about one of your choices with storytelling. um how the protagonist is in front of a projected screen and it seems like a lot of the dialogue and what happens in this play would probably be pre-recorded and projected on that screen rather than like performed live and also just the choice to have the actor in front of the screen. I am wondering if there was any specific reason or um intended impact for that. Yeah. So, you don't really see it in the two um sections that I chose, but as time as the play goes on, time kind of collapse collapses. So, the projection showing things that are from like the future or the past. And as it as it goes on, it's kind of hard to tell if the presence on stage or in the projection and they start interacting with the projection. It's kind of hard to it's hard to visualize and so I didn't read it and it's hard. It needs more context. Um but so I I wanted to figure out a way to make it seem like time is collapsing and the projections are that way of me doing that. um by having them being able to interact across different times. But yeah, it would have some of it would have to be recorded um beforehand or like live recorded. I've seen like I know the theater department's done some productions where things are recorded like they're still live and they're projected. it's just in a space that you can't currently see at the moment or sometimes it'll be on stage and it'll be projected and you just can't always see where they're >> um I have two questions. Uh the first is more of a clarification. Um in the narrative we never see Kumba or do we in the narrative >> or do you only hear about it from other people? You see it in one scene, but you don't really see it. Like, they're there, but you don't really interact with the world that much. Um, because he talks to someone that he met there. >> Oh. >> Uh, but you don't really It's kind of hard. It's a hard thing to portray in a play because it's so expansive. [snorts] Um, so you're never really there >> for certain. Yeah. Um, and my other question is if you've had an opportunity to stage any of it like scenes or um if not, you know, what you envision the future life of this project to be. Will it go through a development process? Um, what what are your hopes and dreams for for the piece now that it's done? >> Um, I haven't been able to do like a staging or table reading because I kind of just finished it like a week or two ago. Um, but I would like to see a like to see it staged or table reading at the very least. I think it probably won't be for a while because I'm going to be busy for a bit after graduation, but hopefully like afterwards I would like to continue developing it and to see it be done somewhere if possible. Me too. >> Yeah.