Cullud Wattah Tickets

The Public Theater will present the world premiere of Cullud Wattah, written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Candis C. Jones. Cullud Wattah tickets will be available soon.

Cullud Wattah is a play centered on three generations of Black women facing the Flint, Michigan water contamination crisis. Marion is a third-generation General Motors employee dealing with layoffs, and her sister, Ainee, is seeking restitution for lead poisoning. The women must confront the toxic relationship between their city and its industry, and what to do now that their contaminated society has sharply limited their family's options for a flourishing life.

Dickerson-Despenza wrote Cullud Wattah as a 2019-2020 Playwright in Residence at the Public and was meant to debut the play in the same season before the pandemic postponed programming. Cullud Wattah went on to win the 2019 Princess Grace Award and the 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, all before the play even made its professional premiere. Cullud Wattah marks Dickerson-Despenza's second collaboration with director Candis C. Jones following the audio play shadow/land, which premiered digitally with the Public in spring 2021.

Performances are staged at the Public's Martinson Theater.

Check back to see when tickets to Cullud Wattah off Broadway will be on sale.

Cullud Wattah is a new Afro-surrealist play about three generations of Black women living through the current water crisis in Flint, Michigan. It’s been 936 days since Flint has had clean water. Marion, a third generation General Motors employee, is consumed by layoffs at the engine plant. When her sister, Ainee, seeks justice and restitution for lead poisoning, her plan reveals the toxic entanglements between the city and its most powerful industry, forcing their family to confront the past-present-future cost of survival. As lead seeps into their home and their bodies, corrosive memories and secrets rise among them. Will this family ever be able to filter out the truth? Cullud Wattah blends form and bends time, diving deep into the poisonous choices of the outside world, the contamination within, and how we make the best choices for our families’ future when there are no real, present options.

By: Erika Dickerson-Despenza
Director: Candis C. Jones
Producer: The Public Theater
Cast list: Crystal Dickinson, Lizan Mitchell, Andrea Patterson, Alicia Pilgrim, Lauren F. Walker
Design: Adam Rigg
Lighting: Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew
Costume: Kara Harmon
Sound: Sinan Refik Zafar