Directed by Tea Alagić
Written by Antoinette Nwandu

• Won the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award.
• Pass Over was a 2019 Lucille Lortel Award nominee for Outstanding Play and a Ruby Prize finalist.

Mentor: Katori Hall
Featuring: Jamie Lincoln Smith, Eden Marryshow, Joe Tapper

Scenic and Costume Design: Becky Bodurtha
Lighting Design: DM Wood
Sound Design: Jane Shaw

Photos by Janio Marrero

Tea Alagić’s Role
Tea Alagić directed the first fully staged professional New York production of Pass Over within the Mentor Project framework. Her direction was central in translating Nwandu’s script into its first complete theatrical form, shaping its physical language, pacing, and rhythmic structure.

This staging helped establish the play’s early theatrical identity and performance vocabulary before it moved on to larger institutional productions and wider recognition.

About the Work:
Pass Over, by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, is inspired by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and the biblical story of Exodus. The play follows Moses and Kitch, two young Black men dreaming of escaping the street corner where they feel trapped.

Blending sharp humor with poetic language, the work confronts systemic racism, police violence, friendship, survival, and the search for freedom.

Pass Over was developed through the Cherry Lane Mentor Project in New York before premiering at Steppenwolf Theatre. It was later adapted for film by Spike Lee and opened on Broadway in 2021.