God is a Woman

and she’s been waiting in a hospital bed.

Bending the conventions of Greek tragedy with the mythic tropes of the American Western, Alesha Harris’, Is God Is, explores how blood ties and traumatic upbringings generate cyclical violence, particularly against people of color. The initial quest for revenge begins when the twin sisters, Anaia and Racine, receive a letter from their estranged mother, known simply as "She," inviting them to her deathbed. Before the sisters step into her room, Harris establishes She's godlike status within their personal mythology through a concise exchange:

ANAIA: You ready?

RACINE: To see God?

ANAIA: God?

RACINE: Well, she made us, didn’t she?

She—the ultimate maternal authority—issues her daughters a brutal command as her final wish: track down and execute the man who destroyed their lives. The audience learns that all three women bear severe burn scars from a fire this man, their father, set years earlier in an attempt to murder his family. She instructs her daughters to feel no remorse when they kill him: “Dead, real dead. Lots of blood is fine.” In this opening scene, Harris carefully grounds the sisters' capacity for future violence in the severe trauma of their upbringing. To unleash violence later in life, these daughters first had to endure it as adolescents. The father, wanting a fresh start, saw murder as his only path forward. By setting the family home ablaze, his horrific act of betrayal instills a deep, unyielding rage within Anaia and Racine. When their creator gives them explicit permission to retaliate, they feel morally and spiritually obligated to obey.

This setup draws heavily on Greek tragedy while reframing the myth of the American West: the father, referred to as "Man," attempted to annihilate his original family to chase the American Dream. He sought a new wife, a home in the suburbs, and a clean slate. Acting with such cold, ruthless violence against his own blood echoes the dark family dynamics of classical tragedy. Harris leverages this mythic weight to justify the campaign of vengeance the sisters unleash not only against Man, but against anyone who stands in their path.

Fighting their way to Man’s suburban sanctuary, the sisters discover that he has fully realized his vision of the American Dream: he has remarried a woman named Angie and fathered another pair of twins. When the sisters confront Angie, she panics, assuming they have come to collect unpaid child support. Anaia cuts her off: “We ain’t animals. We on a mission. From God.” Equipped with a rock in a sock—a crude weapon Racine has carried since an earlier kill—Racine brutally murders Angie. Although the sisters share a sacred bond forged in trauma, Anaia reacts negatively to Angie’s murder, realizing Racine is slipping into excessive cruelty.

Harris structures the secondary characters to mirror the core dynamic between the sisters. Just as Anaia represents the voice of restraint compared to the ruthless Racine, their suburban half-brother Scotch acts as the gentle sibling, while his twin, Riley, embodies rebellious aggression. To gain entry to Man's home and fulfill their creator’s mandate, the sisters deceive their half-brothers into believing they are exotic dancers hired by Man as an early gift.

Once inside, Anaia and Racine discover that their half-brothers enjoyed a privileged, comfortable life—and that Man completely erased his past family from his new narrative. Racine is unable to reconcile this reality. In an outburst reminiscent of a tragic Greek climax, she unleashes a flurry of violence, killing the brothers. However, in the chaotic struggle, Racine’s bloodlust forces Anaia to intervene, accidentally striking her own sister down. Even while fighting for her life and grieving her sister, Anaia stands up to fulfill She's final command.

Harris integrates cinematic Western tropes directly into the stage directions as Man finally arrives:

(The car stops. ANAIA lifts her sister, dragging her out of view. She waits. A car door opens and closes and MAN gets out. We hear hard-soled shoes on the ground. He stops near RILEY’s body for a moment. He continues, stopping at SCOTCH’s body. He walks near the bushes, very close to where ANAIA is hiding, then turns again towards the car.

In the driveway he takes off his shoes and socks, slowly, methodically. He removes his suit jacket and tie. He rolls up his pants legs, whistling. Finally, he takes off his hat and we see his face for the first time.)

Here, Harris invokes the iconic imagery of the Wild West. Man, whose presence has loomed over the entire play, finally steps into the light. He whistles as he methodically strips off his urban attire, adopting the posture of a hyper-masculine, mythic figure preparing for a showdown. The climax functions as a classic Western duel between estranged blood relatives. Anaia and Man engage in a tense verbal confrontation that quickly escalates into physical combat. A severely wounded Racine returns to defend her sister, risking everything to carry out God’s wish. In a tragic echo of their childhood trauma, Racine is consumed by fire once again as Man ignites another blaze.

Ultimately, Harris constructs a world where the sisters' violence stems from a profound absence of maternal nurture and childhood stability. By infusing the narrative with elements of Greek tragedy and the American Western, Harris illustrates how cycle-of-violence narratives force characters to internalize systemic brutality—destroying their own kin rather than breaking the cycle of trauma.