Edinburgh International Festival is one of the world’s most prestigious stages for new theater, and this summer, a group of Dartmouth theater students got to watch a play the Hopkins Center for the Arts helped bring to life make its international debut there.
As part of their Foreign Study Program in London, the students traveled to Scotland to see HANG TIME—Pulitzer Prize finalist Zora Howard’s play, whose international premiere was commissioned and co-produced by the Hop and The Flea Theater.
Led by Analola Santana, chair of the Department of Theater, the students saw the production and connected with New York-based theater director Niegel Smith ’02, part of the creative team behind the show. HANG TIME was presented at the festival, which included a special theme celebrating American ingenuity and creative achievements, from August 20–23 at The Royal Lyceum Theatre.
In the play, three Black men hang from an old, wide tree. Caught together in this liminal space, they shoot the breeze, sharing the great loves and bitter blues of their interrupted lives. Written and directed by Howard, HANG TIME is a gut-wrenching, subversive perspective on the legacy of racialized violence in America. Howard’s work is rooted in the iterative processes of witnessing and telling, centering on themes of diaspora, Black cultural traditions, and relational intimacy.
“Seeing HANG TIME on an international stage expands our students’ understanding of what theater can be. It’s a rare opportunity to immerse them in a contemporary theater-making process firsthand, and to witness the significance of an international premiere as it happens,” said Santana.
Students got to discuss the craft of theater-making directly with the people who made it. Smith, artistic director of The Flea, spoke about his own path into the professional world and the impact his Dartmouth education had on him. He, too, was once on the same FSP in London and had many similar experiences, and is now on a global stage of his own. After the performance, students also met Howard and producer Martin Meccouri, who answered their questions and shared what their work involves.
For Dominique Quiñonez ’28, a psychology major and theater minor, the experience was also a way of processing the play’s themes.
“To me, HANG TIME shows how normalizing generational curses and toxicity in our communities can become second nature. To survive, sometimes you have to justify that toxicity,” Quiñonez said. “However, to reach true liberation, you must also reject those curses before the noose tightens. That is why I appreciate the art and minds of Niegel and Zora, because they work to rewrite and reframe how we approach hard topics in the Black community and how art can help us dissect those problems.”
Critical acclaim
The Edinburgh presentation was part of the festival’s 2026 theme, “All Rise,” marking the 250th anniversary of American independence and exploring the ideas and impact of America’s cultural melting pot.
“The Edinburgh International Festival’s revival of HANG TIME speaks directly to America, and to this year’s festival theme, and is a compelling play,” said Festival Creative Director Roy Luxford. “Making its European premiere, HANG TIME offers a tension and an honest look at America that is a perspective we wanted in this year’s program.”
The production was met with strong critical acclaim. The Guardian described it as “grimly beautiful” and a “dark and chilling testament.” All Edinburgh Theatre called it “an altogether different level” of theater, praising its “rare clarity and … empathy.”
Other outlets, including the Financial Times and The Scotsman, similarly highlighted the production’s unsettling power and restraint, with Disrupting Stages calling it “sophisticated theatre that trusts its audience to do the work.”
HANG TIME premiered off-Broadway at The Flea Theater in March 2023, to similar acclaim. The New York Times called it “undoubtedly moving...a masterwork of small intricacies,” while New York Theatre Wire described it as “a powerfully evocative performance piece...filled with the magic of theatre.”
A longstanding partnership
HANG TIME reflects a longstanding creative partnership between the Hop and The Flea, one of New York’s leading off-off-Broadway companies and a recipient of multiple Obie Awards and a Drama Desk Award for Distinguished Achievement. The Flea is known for telling the underrepresented stories of Black, brown, and queer artists.
“We are committed to supporting outstanding artists and creators of our time who open our eyes to truths and ideas that might otherwise escape our awareness,” says Mary Lou Aleskie, Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director of the Hop. “HANG TIME does just that, and we are proud to have it as part of the Edinburgh International All Rise: Reflections on America. It was especially meaningful that, at a time when our students were in the UK, they were able to experience the work and connect with the creative team.”
Recent collaborations between the two institutions include the Hop’s original production of The Ritual of Breath Is the Right to Resist, an interdisciplinary project responding to the killing of Eric Garner. That work was directed by Smith, incubated at Dartmouth and at The Flea, and presented at Lincoln Center’s 2024 Summer for the City festival. The partnership has also supported the development of Trebien Pollard’s Vegan Chitlins and the Artist Formerly Known as the N-word, a multidimensional embodiment of the Black experience. Pollard, a frequent lecturer in theater at Dartmouth, developed the project at The Flea and further evolved the work during a Hop residency.
“The Flea has always believed that the stories of Black and queer Black artists deserve to be told with rigor, imagination, and care, and that’s the throughline of our work with the Hop,” said Smith. “Watching this piece travel from an off-Broadway stage to an international one is exactly what this partnership was built to do.”
