A racial incident consumes a small college campus in Kirsten Greenidge’s Baltimore. Fiona, a white student, leaves a racist drawing on Alyssa’s dorm room door, igniting a firestorm and forcing a diverse group of first-year students to reckon with their own identities. As Fiona insists it was just a joke, students like Rachel, Leigh, and Grace have difficult conversations about race relations and their place in a society that struggles to see race in a nuanced way. Meanwhile, the dorm’s resident advisor, Shelby, feels completely unequipped to handle such a delicate situation despite coming from a family that idolized civil rights icons. The play was first workshopped in 2016 and feels especially timely in the wake of social justice uprisings and the campus protests in the United States during the Israeli-Hamas war. Baltimore is a challenging ensemble play for diverse young actors that raises difficult questions about identity, race, and belonging. Actors should be aware that the play’s dialogue includes racial slurs.
Baltimore guide sections
