The nuance of being a Black woman in America': Is God Is turns righteous rage into gory horror

"Kara 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."

"They believed their mother was dead until they receive a letter from her. She's on her deathbed now, still rendered immobile from the attempted murder. She has one request for her long-lost daughters: Make your daddy dead. There's a mythic quality to twins, Harris explains. Racine and Anaia move between silent and verbose conversations with one another as they wonder whether or not they possess the same capability for violence as their father."

Is God Is follows twin sisters Racine and Anaia, disfigured as children after their father set their mother on fire in front of them. The sisters move through the foster system while protecting one another, with Racine able to pass more easily and Anaia carrying their trauma openly. They learn their mother is alive through a letter, and she is now dying and unable to move. Her request to her daughters is to make their father dead. The story centers on whether the twins share their father’s capacity for violence, shifting between silence and talk. The film adaptation preserves the emotional and unsettling impact of the stage version.

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