I walked out of Yellow Bicycle Theater on Sunday feeling like I’d just had a real conversation with Khadijah Davis. The kind that sticks with you long after it’s over. Her 60-minute one-woman show Shade isn’t just impressive theater; it’s an honest, heartfelt story about what it’s like to grow up caught between two worlds.

Davis does it all here. She wrote it, produced it, and performs every character herself. And when I say every character, I mean she transforms right before your eyes. Different accents, different body language, different energy. It reminded me of watching Eddie Murphy slip between characters in The Nutty Professor, except this isn’t comedy for laughs.

It’s Davis sharing her real life: growing up Jamaican-born in America, feeling “too American” for her Jamaican friends and “too Jamaican” for her American ones.

What got me wasn’t just how talented she is (though she absolutely is). It was how honest she was willing to be. She tells this story in a way that makes you look at yourself. I kept thinking about kids I knew growing up who came from different backgrounds, and how naturally we connected when we were just allowed to be kids together. Davis holds up a mirror and asks us: why do we make such a big deal out of difference? Why do we do that?

The show is a reminder that our differences aren’t something to fix or smooth over. They’re what make us who we are. And honestly, we’d all be better off if we could just embrace that. For someone’s first solo show, Shade is remarkable. Khadijah Davis has something important to say, and I really hope people show up to hear it. I know I’ll be watching to see what she does next.