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Darius Daughtry: Reverie in Black
May 1, 2023
By Jordan Levin
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Teaching and storytelling have always been inseparable for Darius Daughtry.
As a boy growing up in and around Sistrunk, a historic Black Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, a teacher urged Daughtry to write down what he was feeling and experiencing. It started as profane rants about his father, but then became poetry, raps, stories – even soap opera-esque plays he enacted with He-Man action figures and Barbie dolls.
But it wasn’t until Daughtry began teaching in his late 20’s that he discovered his passion. “It was transformational not only for the students but for me – it helped me figure out my path,” Daughtry says. “Utilizing the arts to help students engage began to hone my voice as a writer.” He began writing plays for the drama department at one high school, discovering the power of storytelling as expression for his mostly Black students, disconnected from the narratives they studied. “Teaching forced me to hear so many different perspectives, to sympathize with and analyze all these varied experiences,” he says. “As an artist I still consider myself an educator.”
Since 2015 Daughtry has led the Art Prevails Project, where he and a cohort of artists perform original poetry, music, and theater around South Florida. Friend Vanya Allen, the performer in Alejandro Rodriguez’s 2022 Here & Now piece, and musician/Miami Light Project collaborator Inez Barlatier urged him to apply to Here & Now. “For the longest I’ve been wanting to develop something that’s more solo performance,” he says. “This feels different. I’m excited.”
For Reverie in Black Daughtry, with an upright bass player and DJ, will evoke a deeply personal, yet universal, story. “We explore ideas of personal journeys, but also who gets to dance and frolic and be free,” Daughtry says. “What does that look like for the Black boy that I was and now the 6’2”, 230-pound dark-skinned Black man that I am? To be able to dance and laugh fully, or feel angry and express it, or feel sad and cry. It’s thinking about this existential battle of being free to fully express oneself.”
Author
Jordan Levin
Jordan Levin has been writing about Miami since the early ’90s, including 18 years at the Miami Herald. As a freelancer, she has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Latina, Billboard, and Ocean Drive magazines, among others. Before turning to journalism, she was a dancer/performer in New York City and an arts presenter in Miami.
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