A Bold New Voice on Stage: trinity at Baltimore Center Stage

Sometimes a show comes along that reminds you why theatre exists in the first place — not just to entertain, but to make you sit uncomfortably with questions about love, loss, and the stories we tell ourselves. That show is trinity, the world-premiere play written by and starring Emmy Award–winning creator Lena Waithe (Master of None, The Chi), now playing at Baltimore Center Stage through March 15. It is bold, funny, emotionally complex, and absolutely worth the trip up the road from DC.

trinity at Baltimore Center Stage

The play follows three Black women identified only as A, B, and C, their anonymity stripping away pretense and inviting the audience to project their own experiences onto the story. A, played by Waithe herself, is trying to write a play about the collapse of her relationship with B, her partner — a meta-theatrical device that allows the story to glitch through time and space, revisiting moments, reimagining outcomes, and interrogating the very act of remembering. C, portrayed with remarkable range and charisma by Fedna Jacquet, occupies a shifting, provocative role in their lives — sometimes a best friend, sometimes a disruptor, sometimes something closer to a force of nature. Courtney Sauls rounds out the ensemble as B, bringing equal parts defiance and vulnerability to a character who aches for understanding in a story that doesn't always offer it.

What makes trinity so compelling is how it resists the urge to tidy things up. Waithe, who writes with a sharp, dry wit that is unmistakably her own, brings genuine humor to scenes that could easily turn heavy. The laughter that comes throughout the show doesn't feel like relief — it feels honest, drawn from the awkward, absurd, and deeply human moments that define real relationships. Even when the emotional stakes are at their highest, there's a lightness in the language that keeps the play breathing.

Director Stevie Walker-Webb, who serves as artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage, helms the production with a poet's sensibility and a clear command of theatrical space. He leans into the instability of memory, letting scenes unfold like recollections rather than in a neat chronological order. The result is a production that feels alive and slightly unpredictable in the best way — you're never quite sure where you are in time, which is precisely the point.

The design work matches that vision with striking precision. Adam Honoré's lighting shifts between harsh, isolating beams and broader washes that reestablish the shared world the characters inhabit, navigating the line between the real and the imagined with a confidence that never calls attention to itself. Hailey LaRoe's projections add another layer of texture, creating an otherworldly canvas that reinforces the play's slippery relationship with what's actual and what's being written into existence. Taylor J. Williams' music completes the atmosphere, pulsing with urgency in some moments and retreating into quiet contemplation in others, always in service of the emotional truth of the scene.

At its heart, trinity is a meditation on accountability — or rather, on how difficult genuine reckoning can be. The play raises uncomfortable questions about emotional fidelity, self-deception, and what it means to grow beyond a version of yourself that someone else loved. It doesn't always resolve those questions cleanly, and that's not a flaw. That ambiguity is the point. Audiences are asked to sit with contradiction, to consider how all of us construct narratives about our own lives that favor our understanding over our responsibility.

For DC theatre lovers, the short trip to Baltimore on the MARC train puts this one well within reach, and it is the kind of show the regional theatre community will be talking about long after it closes. trinity runs through March 15 at Baltimore Center Stage, 700 North Calvert Street, Baltimore. Tickets range from $10 to $90, with senior and student discounts available. The box office can be reached at (410) 332-0033, or tickets can be purchased online at centerstage.org.