Tori Sampson’s new play, “This Land Was Made,” is a speculative take on the origins of the Black Panther Party. The narrator, Sassy, is an aspiring writer, and the play is rooted in Sampson’s personal connection to the political awakening at its center. Sampson’s mother, who was orphaned at the age of 3 and raised by an aunt in the Black Panther Party, taught her daughters to value Black beauty and culture. After her mother’s death, Sampson and her twin sister became wards of the state and attended an all-Black boarding school in Mississippi. “This Land Was Made” is set inside a Bay Area tavern with Huey P. Newton walking in and changing the lives of the people there forever. Sampson’s work demonstrates an “unrelenting investigation of identity that feels both global but also very personal.” Conversations with former Black Panthers were crucial to Sampson’s research process. Sampson also spoke to Kathleen Cleaver, the first woman to hold a leadership position in the party, after Cleaver spoke at Yale. Sampson is developing a play about a nerdy comedian who embarks on a superhero quest to regain her Black card after she mispronounces Tupac Shakur’s name during sex and an animated series called “How to Succeed Without Parents.”
