“Flex” Features Black Female Athletes Yearning to Break Free—at SF Playhouse
Halili Knox (Coach Pace) & the Lady Train basketball team. Photos: Jessica Palopoli
Candrice Jones’ Lady Train Scores Victory!
by Jenyth Jo
As a former Division 1 athlete from Stanford, I wondered whether watching a play on basketball would be as much fun as going to a Valkyries game. Director Margo Hall and her team have created a many-layered show that’s more intense than live basketball.
In “Flex,” playwright Candrice Jones takes us inside the minds of desperate young women who believe basketball is their ticket out of oppression in the 1990s American South.
Two hoops bookend Bill English’s strikingly realistic set design. One hoop, with a chain net, hangs above the team captain’s backyard dirt court. Inside team Lady Train’s high school gym, a shiny glass backboard sports a brand-new white nylon net. Can these Black female athletes escape the chains of Plainnole, Arkansas, by getting a college bid? Can they even reach the new WNBA?
Paige Mayes, Courtney Gabrielle Williams, Camille Collaço, and Emma Gardner
Team Captain Starra Jones (impeccable Santeon Brown) has the moves and sass necessary to attract the scouts. Her mother told her: “it’s not a foul if the referee doesn’t blow the whistle.” Brown’s dribbling prowess (she did play high school ball) resembles Steph Curry’s wizardry. She’s got a real hoopgirl’s game face and sinks her clutch shots onstage.
But Starra can’t stand the new girl from California, Sidney (dazzling Paige Mayes) who has mastered the side-eye slam. Hotshot Sidney has attracted college scouts already. Starra and Sidney trade jealous verbal jabs and fab dance moves, bad attitudes intact.
With soft Southern accents, Brown and Mayes capture smack-down, trash-talking jock lingo. Their words sing and sting. We enjoy the heckling.
Steamy teenage hook-up dreams and condom training on a cucumber keep us hooting during a team sleepover. These women bond before they battle.
The players took an oath not to drink, smoke, or have sex, but April Jenkins (spicy Camille Collaço) is benched for pregnancy. Coach Pace (terrific Halili Knox) prioritizes the unborn child above the upcoming state tournament.
Starra (Santeon Brown) plays basketball with Sidney (Paige Mayes)
After playwright Candrice Jones artfully reveals each player’s secret, she provides a crisis to repair their broken bond. Will Starra learn there’s no “I” in TEAM before it’s too late?
Coach Pace creates a “come to Jesus” moment, asking Starra: “Do you play the game you love, or do you play to show off?” With her booming voice and commanding presence, Halili Knox makes everyone play fair.
Cherise Howard (talented Emma Gardner) wants to preach pro-life religion; her top-notch singing brings the church to us. Donna Cunningham (clever Courtney Gabrielle Williams) provides persuasive witness, even as she weighs her college options.
Basketball consultant Emmanuel Blackwell has the actors dribble, shoot, and run plays onstage, adding energy and tension with crisp passes and defensive triple-stances.
“Flex” tackles baptism, abortion, back-stabbing, and revelations as the team chants and draws us in the game, too. With creative stage movement and shot blocking, this game feels real. We root hard for these young women to keep their dreams alive.
Yes, I miss the early days of women’s sports, when a teen girl’s dream was simply a college scholarship. “Flex” reveals how much harder Southern Black women have to work for their opportunities.
“Flex” by Candrice Jones, directed by Margo Hall, scenic design by Bill English, lighting by Ray Oppenheimer, costumes by Jasmine Milan Williams, and sound by Ray Archie, at San Francisco Playhouse.
Info: sfplayhouse.org - to May 2, 2026.
Cast: Santeon Brown, Camille Collaço, Emma Gardner, Halili Knox, Paige Mayes, and Courtney Gabrielle Williams.
