Kelundra Smith, the director of publishing at Theatre Communications Group, is also a playwright. Her first play, The Wash, which premiered in 2024 in Atlanta, now comes to New York City. Set in 1881, The Wash takes us into the Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike, which was spearheaded by 20 Black women and timed just weeks before the city was to host the International Cotton Exposition. Smith learned of the strike when she visited an exhibition on post-Civil War Reconstruction. Seeing both power and humor in the subject, she began writing during the pandemic, creating an interracial cast of women who fight for their rights and higher wages. “The conversation is so similar in 2024 as it was in 1881 that it is scary,” Smith said at the time. “The term ‘essential workers’ is not new—the laundry women, in letters to the mayor, described themselves as essential workers, saying, ‘We provide an essential service to the sanitation of this city and we should be allowed to set our own rates.’” —Laura Jacobs