La MaMa Theater hosts a stage reading of Underground, followed by a Q&A with the playwright, The New School's Presidential Visiting Scholar, Lisa B. Thompson. 

This political thriller reunites two old college buddies and forces them to ask: how far they are willing to go to ensure Black liberation? 

Directed by Zishan Ugurlu, Professor and Director of the Theater Program at The New School
Featuring Benton Greene, Frank Leon Roberts, Meredith Wright, and Jazmine James

 Lisa B. Thompson is The New School's 2022-2023 Presidential Visiting Scholar. The program builds on an important aspect of The New School’s history—the tradition of bringing to campus outstanding academics, artists, and activists known for their bold research, pedagogical innovations, and groundbreaking ideas to engage with the university’s faculty and students.

 
Thompson is the Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and the advisor to the dean for Faculty Mentoring and Support at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts. She is an award-winning theater artist, teacher, and scholar whose plays employ character and story to thoughtfully explore the Black family, motherhood, migration, racial violence, and sexuality.

Thompson has written four books—Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class, Single Black Female, Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues: Three Plays, and The Mamalogues. Thompson’s plays have been produced off-Broadway, around the United States, and internationally. She has received support for her work from institutions such as the American Council of Learned Societies, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Millay Arts, the National Performance Network, the University of Texas’ Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center.