Kill Move Paradise is a play written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames. The story follows four young Black men who suddenly find themselves in an abstract, unfamiliar space. As they gradually realize, they were each stripped of their lives before they understood what was happening. This space becomes a liminal "waiting room" between life and death.

For this project, we envisioned the set within one of New York’s largest performance spaces, The Park Avenue Armory. The goal was to immerse the audience in the same sense of spatial disorientation as the characters. Upon entering the vast, darkened space, the audience encounters a stark, strangely shaped white box at its center. The director of our collaboration described her vision as an "experiment" in observation and being observed—where both the characters and the actors should feel confined and scrutinized.

To achieve this, the stage was designed as a two-sided open structure, with audience members seated face-to-face on either side of the box. The "waiting room" at the center was enclosed in glass, further reinforcing the theme of entrapment. Even before the performance officially begins, the audience’s journey—walking into the space, seeing the box, sitting down, and noticing the spectators on the other side—initiates the experience.

The moment black sand seeps through the cracks, forcing the first young Black man into the box, the confrontation begins—a direct challenge to society and its injustices.