Heads will roll in a new comedy from Mosaic Theater Company … that is, the head belonging to the Abraham Lincoln statue of the controversial Emancipation Memorial in Capitol Hill.

Helen Hayes Award-winning playwright Psalmayene 24 — who goes by Psalm within the theater community (born Gregory Morrison) — wrote the play, Monumental Travesties, with a clear objective in mind:

“It was really inspired by my disdain for the statue,” Psalm says. “I’ve been sort of tormented by the imagery in it. It was really a way for me to alchemize my own feelings, my own disgust with the monument. So it really comes from a personal place of trying to work through these feelings.”

Psalm’s production focuses on the interplay between a Black performance artist named Chance (played by Louis E. Davis), his wife, Brenda (Renee Elizabeth Wilson), and their white, liberal Capitol Hill neighbor, Adam (Jonathan Feuer). Things get hairy when Chance decides to stealthily yank Lincoln’s head from the Emancipation Memorial — also called the Freedman’s Memorial — and the bronze head ends up in Adam’s garden.

Psalm, 50, describes the play as one of his most personal pieces — even more so than a solo show he wrote about his relationship with his late father.

“It sort of connects to my own personal, lived experience in the city,” Psalm says. “These characters are loosely inspired by folks, not only in my own life from my past, but folks who very well could be people that you would meet in the city.”

The memorial in Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park was a flashpoint in the public debate following George Floyd’s killing in May 2020, as the nation grappled with racist imagery from centuries past and monuments to slaveholders and Confederates. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced legislation calling for the removal of the statue, which depicts Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation in one hand while extending the other over a kneeling, formerly enslaved person.

Depending on the viewer, the statue either represents a Black man rising from broken chains or a man who is subservient and not in control of his own destiny — uninvolved in securing his own freedom. The statue was primarily paid for by formerly enslaved, Black Union soldiers, who had little say, if any, in planning the memorial to the assassinated president. Thomas Ball, a Massachusetts-born sculptor who lived in Italy, designed it. And while Boston removed its version of Ball’s statue, D.C.’s, managed by the National Park Service, remains standing.

Psalm says a bit of levity can be the best way to deal with such heavy topics.

“The piece is about race, remembering, and reconciliation,” he says. “Ultimately, I’m trying to bring folks together. But I think there are still some hard conversations around race around slavery that this country still needs to have.”

The play will run at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE, Mosaic Theater Company’s home base.

The run includes events related to the play, part of Mosaic’s “Reflection Series,” which provides a space for the audience to engage more deeply with the subject matter of each work selected for the season. (The series began with The Till Trilogy last fall.)

The events include a Sept. 6 discussion on memorializing history (at the Edlavitch D.C. Jewish Community Center), a Sept. 9 walking tour and discussion at the memorial itself, and a Sept. 12 panel discussion on the statue’s history (at the Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital). Following the Sept. 14 performance, Mosaic will host a talkback with Artistic Director Reginald L. Douglas, Psalm, and a representative from the D.C. History Center.

The production is currently in rehearsals, and Psalm says many details are under wraps (“folks are just gonna have to come and check it out,” he says), but he does share that Chance’s defiant act will lead the audience to questions about the “woke” spectrum and the country’s complicated relationship with 19th-century memorials.

“Things like that have actually happened to statues, too, so it’s not like it’s totally far-fetched,” Psalm says of the beheaded Lincoln. “I thought it would be an interesting way to start a play.”

Monumental Travesties, Mosaic Theater Company; Sept. 7 – Oct. 1; $42-$70; Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St NE