I confess.
What if....
A few weeks back, an email arrived from Psacoya Guinn, New York Theatre Workshop’s Director of Education and Community Engagement. Now, emails from Psacoya are quite welcome. Sometimes they bear offers of free tickets! Or a gathering of alumni of NYTW’s Mind the Gap program—intergenerational conversations and playwriting—and I am a proud member of that tribe.
This email invited me to present something at Open Street, a FABnyc-hosted event outdoors on East 4th Street as I’d done last fall.
Here’s me in October 2025 reading my work.
And here’s an excerpt from this year’s invite:
“This open salon will feature artists exploring the theme of sharing your story. From successful milestones, tragedies, unforgettable moments in life, this is an opportunity to share your story! Just like the solo shows in our In the Bricks festival, this open salon invites artists to share their personal stories through monologues, songs, poetry and more.” — Psacoya Guinn
Bear in mind, each artist gets only three minutes to perform their…whatever.
I looked at the invite, remembered how nervous I’d suddenly gotten last year, and decided to file this email somewhere, with any luck, I’d forget I’d ever seen it.
Then, as so often happens, my shoulder got tapped…
…by the invisible.
Anyway, here’s what rapidly unfolded.
I CONFESS
2 to 3 minutes, eh?
Last year when I took part in Open Salon, I read something, and my knees started knocking wildly like they haven’t since I was a little Black girl in Catholic school far out in Queens many decades ago. I swore I’d never again subject myself to that experience.
But then Psacoya sent her invite, and while I stood by helplessly, memories cascaded into my mind: Friday evening confessions at our parish church.
Confession. Back in the day, that day being the 1950s and ‘60s, they didn’t call it Sacrament of Reconciliation. That language emerged well after the Second Vatican Council when I’d made it to college—yes, a Catholic one—and was beyond caring.
Confession meant kids—teens and adults, too, of course—sidling into the sanctum of a small booth with a latticed screen that separated confessor from a priest standing in for compassionate Jesus—you know, the Biblical one, not the one who might be a doctor or…wait…President of the United States?
Anyway, I was an only child. Quiet. Introverted. Shy. Arts Nerd. Science Nerd. A model girlchild of a Black Caribbean immigrant family with a mom known to be handy with a whipping belt.
You know what all that adds up to?
Lying.
That’s right. The creative sin of lying—right there in the confessional booth.
Our school mandated weekly confession. So, I had to go. As a pathetically good girl, I had to make up sins to tell the priest—little ones, mind you, not mortal ones.
I had to swear repentance and take my penance and grace for stupid, trivial things I’d never done.
Grace? I have a lot. Truthfully, despite all the confessional lying, I know I was never denied it—then or now.
But it does make me wonder, what if?
What if the Sacrament of Reconciliation was more an opportunity to tell our stories, to say, in the sacred space of the booth, not what horrors we might have done but who we are, and are becoming, in full, and what daily wonders we are learning about ourselves and this world.
A storytelling booth in which eagerly listening priests—perhaps, some day, a good number of them women—might also learn a useful and liberating thing or two.
©2026, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
INTERESTING UPDATE!
A new email just arrived from Psacoya—and well, waddayaknow?
NYTW’s Open Salon participation in the May 21st Open Street event turned out to be a miscommunication with FABnyc and has been cancelled.
Oh, well.
No knocking knees, and at least I got a new Substack post out of it! :-D
Have a good weekend, folks!
Meanwhile, if you’re in the New York metro-area—particularly, downtown Manhattan—and love food and meeting new people, you might enjoy this outdoor event sponsored by NYTW and coming up on Thursday, May 28. Yes, this one is happening and sounds like fun!
If interested in taking part in The Longest Table, sign up here..
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Oh beautiful! This sparked something in me . I too remember being scared in Catholic school. Waiting in line to "confess" and fabricating sins so that I'd have something to tell the priest and get it over with! And really leaning into this line taught to me by the nuns "for these and all my sins I am sorry". Phew! like a get out of jail free card. Thank you for your grace and generosity, Eva.