Catherine Noa Ashley is a multimedia designer and performance artist whose work spans sound, installation, performance, and moving image. As a playwright, Ashley writes experimental, music-infused one-acts that sit with time, relationship, and the absurd. Recent Credits: Spores, (Vocalist) Performa. Blue Seal, Blue Sea, (Sound Designer), The Makers’ Space. FAT HAM, (Sound Designer), Wilbury Theatre Group. Untitled Writers Group, Fall 2025. catherinenoa.com @inoaplace
ABOUT THE MONOLOGUE
Postures of Return is developing performance work that traces how the Black femme body navigates voice, posture, and movement across spaces that love, tolerate, and misunderstand it. The piece explores presence as something continually negotiated through repetition. The first public showing will be at The Flynn in Burlington, VT as part of their Snap First Person Arts Festival.
If you enjoy a monologue published in the BLACK WOMAN GENIUS project, we encourage you to reach out to the playwright to tell them so. If the playwright has not included an email address or website, let us know at info@nycplaywrights.org and we'll pass along your message.
EXCERPT FROM POSTURES OF RETURN
~ Excerpt published by permission, all rights held by the playwright.
I’ve learned I can’t speak more than twice in a moment without someone deciding I’m doing too much, as if clarity and confidence were a spectacle. (said confidently)
My perspective is valuable, I’m the only person in the room that thinks this way.
A lauded voice presses on a bruise they pretend isn't there.
Instead, I listen to lukewarm insights applauded like revelation, jokes that miss their own punchline, spoken by people who have never had to worry that one sentence too many will rewrite their character.
I sit counting each one like a ration.
Before they dissipate, I pour these unused thoughts onto paper or later drape them on the eager ears of friends.
A beat
I stand too tall.
Neck stiff, shoulders square, breath clipped.
I shrink too.
Arms folding in, chin tucked, breath uneven.
Sometimes I graze the doorframe, other times my feet float above the floor.
I have to do my hair before first call and yes, texture wasn’t considered in the timetable. Were they even thinking about me?
I wear the air wrong.
It drapes off my shoulders,
pools at my ankles,
nothing bespoke.
Every degree shifts the spine differently. I don’t want my body to split into two.