For all the versions of Beyoncé we’ve seen in her career — beauty queen, vixen, scorned women — stand-up comedian might be her most uninhibited. But as much as the Renaissance World Tour is limned with the beauty of aliveness and vitality, it is also preoccupied with mortality. She is deeply aware of the precarity of Black, queer and trans life. The shift between the ecstasy of the concert and the reality of the world was so disconcerting it was almost physically painful. But Beyoncé isn’t the undertaker; she is directing the second-line band at the funeral procession.

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Persons: Beyoncé, we’ve, —, “, livin, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, O’Shae Sibley, vogueing, Barbara Ann Teer, Albert Einstein Organizations: National Black Theater Locations: York, Brooklyn, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Fla