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More Than Skin Deep:
"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."
—Toni Morrison
What's New At The Color Line
Watch the More Than Skin Deep performance trailer, exploring race, identity, and connection through poetry and dialogue.
Listen to our live conversation on Talk of Iowa, Iowa Public Radio, where we discuss mentorship and navigating differences.
Read latest review of More Than Skin Deep May 2025
Read our story featured in The Atlantic article, “The Value of Friendships That Don't Come Easy”.
A Journey Between Us
How did a formal mentorship between two very different women evolve into a creative collaboration about race, trust, and truth?
We were once two women assigned to a mentoring arrangement.
One was young, inexperienced, Black, and wary of the other who was twenty years her senior, well established in her career, and White.
Jan Gross and Heather Lobban-Viravong
Reluctant and uneasy at first, we agreed to meet... talk, walk, listen to each other.
We built trust and began to speak openly and confront shameful truths.
We wrote collaboratively, exchanged poems, and confronted the unspoken realities of being Black and not Black.
We knew our approach was needed in a polarized world.
We wanted others to "see" and "be seen" in a meaningful way.
We asked a theater professional, Lesley Delmenico, to adapt our manuscript into a 30-minute Performance followed by guided small-group discussion.
Funded by a Mellon Presidential Grant for "Connecting People through Humanities," we launched our first live performance. The audience said "More Than Skin Deep: Live Conversations" needs to reach those who hunger for hope and the opportunity to engage in thoughtful conversations.
Now available for public programming:
See PerformancesContact us for further inquiries:
atthecolorline@gmail.com
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