To Be a Stranger: Whitney White Explores Identity, Migration in New Musical

Born and raised in Chicago, Whitney White took her very first trip abroad to Paris — “like so many Black artists do,” she said.

She saw the sights, ate the food and, one night on a dance floor, she met a man.

They didn’t speak the same language. He was a stranger. To him, so was she. And yet, they shared a passionate kiss.

“This was very long time ago,” she said with a laugh, “but how come in some settings, you kiss a stranger who speaks a different language, then in another setting, you turn away?”

That question, among others, informs the musical dialogue behind “The Case of The Stranger,” the newest production in development by the writer, performer and Tony-nominated director. She and an ensemble, including vocalists Veronica Otim and Rotana Tarabzouni, will perform a selection of the music on Saturday, June 21, at Guild Hall in East Hampton, where she and her co-director, Maxim Pozdorovkin, participated in the William P. Rayner Artist-in-Residence program in 2024.

“The show is attempting to look at an issue that literally does affect every edge of the globe, even the Hamptons,” White said. “And I’m so grateful to Guild Hall for being brave enough to let us work on it here.”

The project began in 2022, when director Phyllida Lloyd — who famously led a trilogy of Shakespeare plays and reimagined them with an all-female cast — sent White a relatively obscure monologue from the Bard’s play “Sir Thomas More,” one of the earliest known pleas for a compassionate refugee policy.

In it, the titular character — in this clip, acted by Ian McKellen — is seen talking to a group of Englishmen who are angry that foreigners have taken their jobs and land, White said, setting the scene.

“Thomas More says to the mob, ‘What would you do if you were strangers? How would you like to be treated? Would you like to be treated the way we treat them?’” she said. “And from there, I started reading articles and talking to people about how ‘strangers’ are treated today.”

She learned about the 53 migrants left for dead in a shipping container by human smugglers in San Antonio, Texas, in 2022. She read about the man, believed to be a stowaway on a plane bound for London from Nairobi, who fell and landed in the backyard of a house, just a few feet away from a sunbather.

While working on the musical in Greece, where she had continued developing it with Greek singers, “at the time, literally, a boat of migrants from the coast of North Africa were just floating in between Greece and Turkey, because Greece had turned them away,” she said.

“The piece isn’t all sad,” she said, noting that there is also a song called, “The Kiss.” “I’m really taking the idea of a stranger and playing with, what are all the ways you treat a stranger, someone you don’t know?”

Throughout the writing, research and composing process — the latter alongside music director Ben Covello — White has asked herself the same question.

The answer, she said, is in the music.

“All the songs are from my point of view, playing with either being the stranger or encountering the stranger,” she said. “When you’re on the train and someone’s trying to sell candy to you and they speak Spanish to you, I’ve been someone who’s turned away, but I also identify as a Caribbean woman in many ways, and so it’s complex. It’s about the hypocrisy of it all. That’s what the piece is looking at.

“And the music is really good,” she continued. “I just love playing the music.”

The score is rooted in soul, jazz, R&B and global sounds, she explained, performed by a cast entirely comprised of women.

“It’s just a better dialogue to me. I think also the issue of being a traveler impacts women differently, and it’s just the conversation,” she said. “I make theater to be in conversation with something and being in conversation with these female singers has been deeply meaningful to me.”

Her earliest artistic and musical memories are tied to her mother, White explained, who was always putting culture in front of her daughter’s eyes to digest — from music and festivals to movies and books.

“I remember the earliest songs I ever wrote were when I was 6 years old,” she said. “I grew up in a Black church. It just seems like the most useful way to use my physical instrument to engage with the world — and it has always felt like that.”

An Obie and Lilly Award winner, White earned a Tony nod for best direction of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” last year and, this weekend, her current Broadway project, “The Last Five Years,” starring Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas, will close its run as she moves forward with her new musical.

“That’s what directors do. You make something that better run without you,” she said. “You’re not in it, and it’s like having a kid and it gets up and it walks.”

While “The Case of The Stranger” is currently in development, she is seeking funding to turn it into the production she envisions, with a cast of eight female singers exploring themes of identity, migration and the power of unexpected kinship.

“It’s a show that’s looking at how bodies move around the globe and immigration and our own relationship to immigration,” she said, “and sadly, every time I work on the piece, especially now, it’s evergreen.”

Whitney White will present music from “The Case of The Stranger” on Saturday, June 21, at 8 p.m. at Guild Hall in East Hampton. A conversation with White, OLA Executive Director Minerva Perez and artist Oscar Molina, moderated by Monique Long, will follow. Tickets start at $25. For more information, visit guildhall.org. Guild Hall is at 158 Main Street in East Hampton.