Actors Vivica A Fox, Kara Young and Mallori Johnson on subverting revenge tropes as Aleshea Harris’s play storms on to the screen
K
ara Young remembers the fervor around Is God Is’s off-Broadway run in 2018. Playwright Aleshea Harris’s revenge tale ran at New York’s Soho Rep theater from February through May of that year. Young was performing in a different show at the time, but she knew she needed to see Harris’s play by any means necessary.
“I was lucky to get a ticket,” says the two-time Tony award-winning actor, recalling the buzz about the show that rippled through the theater community and saw it transfer to London in 2021. As soon as she saw it, Young easily understood why: “It blew my mind. Those characters have stayed in my spirit since 2018.”
The story is just as moving and unsettling on-screen as it was on-stage. Harris adapted her Obie award-winning show into the new feature film Is God Is and makes her directorial debut with the film, too. The epic tells the story of twin sisters Racine (played by Young) and Anaia (played by Mallori Johnson). As kids, they were disfigured with burn scars after their father set their mother on fire in front of them. The girls moved through the foster system, protecting one another. Racine is the Rough One, as her character’s full name goes. She passes more easily in the world than Anaia, the Quiet One, who wears their physical trauma on her face.
