It has been a year and half since the curtains rose and the spotlight shone at Hallie Flanagan Studio Theater, but this lull in live productions didn’t stop the Smith Theatre Department from putting on a show-stopping rendition of Christin Eve Cato’s “Stoop Pigeons.” The play depicts the story of four teenagers living in a predominantly Black and Hispanic community that is deeply affected by the issues of gentrification, mass incarceration, drug addiction and health care inequalities. The play was selected by the Theatre Department’s Anti-Racist Season Selection Committee. They chose to produce “Stoop Pigeons” as this play, as it says in the program, “shines a light on contemporary socio-racial issues that are too often sidelined from mainstream theatrical communities.”
The play opens in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn in 2013 with Ms. Suzy, Mario’s mother and an unhoused woman, as she aimlessly pushes a shopping cart of empty plastic bags down the street, lamenting the loss of her son and the life she once lived. Kimberly Estrada ’25 executed this scene with such raw passion that the audience could instantly empathize with Ms. Suzy’s woes and wonder what led her to be in that situation.
2013 gives way to 1995. The play shifts back and forth between the past, present and future. Throughout these shifts, the audience can observe how Mario, Lexi, Tanya and Bridgit have grown from wide-eyed children playing double dutch and braiding hair to teenagers who have to grapple with housing insecurity, big life decisions including whether to leave the stoop.
Kyle Boatwright, director of the Smith production of “Stoop Pigeons” said that the play “deftly addresses issues the same way as we as people of color experience them: woven indelibly into our individual stories as our collective history.”
“Stoop Pigeons” will make you laugh, cry and think all within one short period of time. Be prepared to get emotional yet also to think critically about health care institutions and mental health within the Smith community and your home communities.
I don’t know anyone who didn’t cry watching this play. SO GOOD. I remember when the gentrification started in Bushwick. I left NYC in 2004 and haven’t been back but I’m told I’d never recognize it now (like a lot of Brooklyn anymore, apparently). Anyway – this play was amazing. I was grateful to be wearing a mask but judging from the sniffles I heard everywhere around me I wasn’t the only one trying to hide behind one.