In 1832, a mother and daughter keep vigil at a grave by The African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Philadelphia. Today, at a summer camp on the same grounds, a new, yet not entirely different mother and daughter sing camp songs and try to keep the daughter from getting expelled. As the mother in each generation tries to protect her family, both the living and the dead, timelines collide and secrets and souls become buried and revealed. What Talkin’ Broadway called “Joyous. A Lesson for our times.” The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) is a darkly comic play about our nation’s long practice of harming Black bodies in the name of scientific progress, our responsibility to time, the importance of truth, and the role joy plays in living with a history we cannot change.

Robust, questing, enlivening - The New York Times