Ever wonder what goes on in the mind of a playwright?
Our Author Insights series features personal essays from playwrights, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the ideas and experiences that shaped their work.
Below, read “Finding Voice in the Midst of Grief”, where playwright Cris Eli Blak reflects on his play Her Beautiful Sound. You can also download a free PDF that pairs the essay with short, classroom-ready activities for students.
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Finding Voice in the Midst of Grief
Cris Eli Blak
At the heart of Her Beautiful Sound is a question I kept returning to as I wrote: What happens when a young person is grieving, but the world never gives them language for that grief? More specifically, what happens when that young person is a girl of color whose voice has already been conditioned to be quieter, smaller, more palatable? This play began as an exploration of how silence is inherited, and how voice can be reclaimed as a form of survival.
I was inspired to write this piece both personally and in response to the world around me. My own journey into storytelling began during a time of instability, when writing became a place of refuge and truth. I learned early that stories are not luxuries; they are lifelines. Yet when I looked at the theatrical canon, I rarely saw young people, families, or communities that reflected the ones I knew – people navigating grief, poverty, and resilience not as abstract ideas, but as daily realities. Her Beautiful Sound emerged from that absence and from a desire to offer young audiences a mirror rather than a lesson.
Nina, the play’s thirteen-year-old protagonist, is uprooted by the sudden death of her father and thrust into a new environment shaped by strong, intergenerational woman. Her journey reflects a belief I hold deeply: that healing is communal and culturally rooted. The women in Nina’s family do not “fix” her grief. Instead, they surround it in memory, music, humor, and language. Through them, Nina learns that voice - spoken, written, rapped, remembered – is not something she has to earn. It is a birthright.
Formally, the play’s structure supports this idea. Her Beautiful Sound blends lyrical dialogue, spoken word, rap, and ancestral storytelling because grief itself is nonlinear. It does not move neatly from pain to closure. The use of heightened language and music allows internal worlds to live alongside the external, giving voice to what often remains unspoken. Staging and casting emphasize lineage and presence, with women carrying history in their bodies and voices, guiding Nina not toward resolution, but toward emergence.
Ultimately, Her Beautiful Sound is about transformation, not the erasure of grief, but its evolution into expression. It is a play that insists young girls of color deserve space to be loud, complex, and heard. In a world that so often quiets them, this story argues that voice is not just sound. It is legacy, agency, and the foundation of a better world.