#BLACK THEATER

[black-is-beautiful18]

The term trauma porn has got to be removed from Black ppls vocabulary cuz a lot of the time y’all not even using it correctly. The Color Purple in all it’s forms is not trauma porn. If you didn’t get the message from the 3 versions of it that exist then that’s on you. I can’t do anything for you. Those experiences are very real for Black women and no it’s not propaganda against Black men. If you think that it’s somehow saying that all Black men are abusers then, again, that is a you problem. Figure it out but for the love of god stop talking about stuff you didn’t even know existed until yesterday.🧍🏾‍♀️🧍🏾‍♀️

[bdfurrow]

Via FlourishCulture

[cowgirl-frog]

Blackness and Theater: A Rant

Soo I know no one will see this and it's kinda random but I saw a post saying new tumblrs need to actually post things so imma ramble.

I haaate black "representation" in theater. Before anybody comes for my neck, I am black. But as a musical lover specifically, i am sick of slave stories and racism and one black character per production so you can meet your quota(*cough* dear evan hansen *cough*). All the groundbreaking representation people talk about is usually just black comedic side characters who talk about oppression every two seconds and are loud and angry and they fight and they only listen to rap music. There isn't anything wrong with characters like that, but it's so annoying to have that be the only representation of your race. People scream about how broadway is soooo diverse, but when you are any minority that isn't white (or white passing, or white adjacent), you and your culture will become the same monolithic, stereotypical representation that you could get anywhere else. It's just really frustrating. And honestly, I can't even really be mad at theater specifically, because it's EVERYWHERE. When you watch a horror movie, the black character always dies first. When you watch a drama or a comedy, there's always a sassy uppity black friend to give the white female lead advice, OR its a black show in which there is a wrongful imprisonment/police brutality incident/overtly racist white characters/absent father/gangs/drugs/robbery etc. I'm just so tired of it. Why can't black characters have fantastical stories free of racism in two parent households? Why can't black women have emotions? Why can't black men have hobbies? In Funny Girl, the issue isn't that Fanny Brice is Jewish, that's just a thing that she is. It might inform how she sees the world or how she interacts with it, but that's not the plot. In black stories, them being black IS the plot. The existence of blackness is enough of an issue to warrant a whole story being told, and I hate it. I wish black people could engage with escapism like everyone else. It's come to the point where I sometimes avoid watching shows with large black casts because I KNOW that it will become a tragedy by virtue of their blackness. When you look up articles about black theater, you get results like:

ALL of the works cited in BOTH of these articles are focused on slavery and or racism. And there's nowhere I can look to make that picture any better, because according to producers and writers, that's all my culture is and all it ever will be.

Tl:dr In both theater and and society at large, being black is boiled down to racism and tragedy, and a wrote a very long post to my other wise unproductive blog to ramble about how my culture's representation is awful. (Aka I'm trying to be an opinion journalist in an attempt to graduate from my wish I was white era)

[writemarcus]

Playwrights Set for THE FIRE THIS TIME Festival 7th Cycle Of New Works Lab

The seventh cycle began in October 2024 and will meet monthly through May 2025.

By: Chloe Rabinowitz Oct. 24, 2024

The Fire This Time Festival, an annual festival of new work by playwrights of African and African-American descent, has revealed that playwrights Melda Beaty (2022 International Black Theatre Festival's Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin Rolling World Premiere Award for "Coconut Cake"), Rachel Herron (2022-2023 resident playwright with Colt Coeur), and Marcus Scott (Princess Grace Award finalist) have been selected to develop full-length plays in the seventh cycle of their New Works Lab. The seventh cycle began in October 2024 and will meet monthly through May 2025.

In 2015 The Fire This Time established The Fire This Time Writers' Group with the mission to provide TFTT alumni and writers from the TFTT community the opportunity to develop new work in a nurturing and supportive environment. In 2017, the initiative was renamed the New Works Lab. From its inception to the present, the lab has been co-directed by educator and playwright Cynthia Grace Robinson ("Letters From Loretta," "Freedom Summer" "What If?" "Dancing on Eggshells") and A.J. Muhammad, a producer with TFTT. Funding for the 7th cycle of the New Works Lab was made possible by generous support from The Black Seed Fund.

Since its launch, over twenty playwrights have developed work in the New Works Lab including Kendra Augustin, Ngozi Anyanwu, France-Luce Benson, Kim Brockington, Tyrell Bennett, Christine Jean Chambers, Edgar Chisholm, Adrienne Dawes, Danielle Davenport, Khalil Kain, Jay Mazyck, Maia Matsushita, Liz Morgan, Shawn Nabors, Deneen Reynolds-Knott, T.R. Riggins, James Anthony Tyler, William Watkins, Shamar S. White, Mars Wolfe, and Antu Yacob.

Melda Beaty is an enthusiastic playwright of eight stage plays: "Front Porch Society," "Coconut Cake," "Thirty," "The Lawsons: A Civil Rights Love Story," "Feebleminded," "COVID Be Damned," "Gaslight Garden" and "Guess What's for Dinner?" Her plays have enjoyed national productions and/or recognition. Most recently, she received the 2022 International Black Theatre Festival's Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin Rolling World Premiere Award for her stage play, "Coconut Cake." The play will receive five professional productions between 2024-2025. She was also a 2021 Confluence Fellow with the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. In addition, Melda is the author of two books. When not writing, she serves on the Board of Directors for the August Wilson Society and as a contributing editor for Black Masks magazine. Melda resides in Chicago, Illinois with her three talented daughters and is an assistant professor of English at Olive-Harvey Community College. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her graduate degree from Illinois State University.

Rachel Herron is a Black, queer, multidisciplinary artist residing in Brooklyn. She is currently a company member of Colt Coeur Theater, where she was a 2022-2023 resident playwright. Her plays include "It's Only a High School Reunion" (Live and In Color 24 Hour Festival), "Red Red Wine" (Fire This Time Festival 13th annual Ten-Minute Play Program), and "Token" (O'Neill Center Semifinalist). Additionally, her playwriting portfolio has landed her as a finalist for the WP Theater Lab and a semi-finalist for the June Bingham Commission with Live and In Color. She's written several original pilots, of which she was named a CBS Writers Mentoring Program finalist (2019), a Mentorship Matters semifinalist (2021), and a two-time Disney Writing Program finalist (2022 and 2023). She is a mentee in the #startwith8 program for women of color trying to break into television writing. She wrote, directed, and starred in a short film called IDOL CHASER, which premiered in Fall 2024 at Katra Film Series and took home the Audience Choice Award. Her satirical writing is featured on McSweeney's Internet Tendency. She received a BFA in Drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Marcus Scott is a dramatist and journalist. Full-length works: TUMBLEWEED (finalist: 2017 BAPF & 2017 Austin Playhouse Festival of New American Plays; semifinalist: 2022 O'Neill NPC, 2022 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & 2017 Princess Grace Award), SIBLING RIVALRIES (finalist: 2023 Normal Ave's NAPseries, 2021 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference & 2021 Judith Royer Excellence In Playwriting Award; semi-finalist: 2022 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & 2021 Princess Grace Award), THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD (finalist: 2023 Princess Grace Award, 2023 Blue Ink Playwriting Award; semifinalist: 2024 BAPF, 2024 Fault Line Theater's Irons in the Fire & 2024 O'Neill NPC), CHERRY BOMB (recipient: 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In-Residence). Heartbeat Opera commissioned Scott to adapt Beethoven's FIDELIO (Co-writer; Met Live Arts at the MET Museum, NY Times Critics' Pick). Scott is the recipient of the Chelsey/Bumbalo Playwriting Award (2024). He is a finalist for the 2024-2025 Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellows Program, 2022 Many Voices Fellowship, 2021 NYSAF Founders' Award and is a 2021 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award semi-finalist. His articles appeared in Architectural Digest, Time Out New York, American Theatre Magazine, Playbill, Elle, Out, Essence, The Brooklyn Rail, among others. MFA: NYU Tisch.

The Fire This Time Festival was founded in 2009 by playwright and producer Kelley Girod to provide a platform for playwrights of African and African-American descent to write and produce evocative material for diverse audiences. Since the debut of the first 10-minute play program in 2010, presented in collaboration with FRIGID New York, The Fire This Time Festival has has produced and developed the work of more than 90 playwrights including Katori Hall, Dominique Morisseau, Radha Blank, Antoinette Nwandu, Jocelyn Bioh, korde arrington tuttle, Stacey Rose, Aziza Barnes, C.A. Johnson, Kevin R. Free, Charly Evon Simpson, Angelica Cheri, James Anthony Tyler, Jordan Cooper, Nathan Yungerberg, Nia A. Robinson, and Cris Eli Blak.

The Fire This Time's first anthology, "25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Rebirth, and Black Theater" edited by Kelley Girod was released by Bloomsbury Publishing in February 2022. www.firethistimefestival.com

FRIGID New York's mission is to provide both emerging and established artists the opportunity to create and produce original work of varied content, form, and style, and to amplify their diverse voices. We do this by presenting an array of monthly programming, mainstage productions, an artist residency, and eight annual theater festivals that create an environment of collaboration, resourcefulness, and innovation. Founded in 1998, the aim was and is to form a structure, allowing multiple artists to focus on creating and staging new work and providing affordable rental space to scores of independent artists. Now in our third decade we have produced a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater. www.frigid.nyc

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Purlie Victorious

PURLIE VICTORIOUS by Ossie Davis directed by Kenny Leon: Kenny Leon wisely opens the first Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’ pioneering play with the actors helping each other into their costumes before posing for a picture. This demonstration of the way actors help each other regardless of race, gender, etc., allows us to laugh at (not with) the racism of the play’s era. Leslie Odom, Jr. stars as a self-taught preacher and con man out to claim his inheritance by passing a young woman (Kara Young) off to the wealthy white landowner (Jay O. Saunders) as heir to a $500 bequest that will save the black people’s church. Leon’s production is energetic, sometimes so much so that words get garbled. But there’s some inspired playing from all the actors, with Young doing some particularly impressive physical work as the uneducated kitchen worker who tries to pass herself off as a sophisticated college graduate. Davis’ script is full of good ideas and good comic writing, particularly for Odom’s brother (Billy Eugene Jones), who slips little double meanings into his more subservient moments. This was a great way to end my New York trip, and if this review is a little short, it’s because I’m exhausted and fighting a cold.

[zegalba]

Hans Poelzig: "The Great Theater" (1919)

[neishroom]

the kiddos :]

[diana-andraste]

Study of a Japanese Noh Dancer, Mario von Bucovich, c. 1926

[maxyartwork]

black widow (the avengers; 2012) commission 🩵

[inthedarktrees]

Ingrid Bergman plays actress Mary Grey who is playing Joan of Arc, in the play Joan of Lorraine, 1946. In this scene, Grey begins to truly understand her character as she awaits her execution in prison.

[lilacthebooklover]

i like to think that the lords in black chose to be called that for the lols. they show up at summonings like "it's us the lords in black <3" while dressed in bright neon and watch as confusion ensues. legends.

[black-is-beautiful18]

Y’all don’t want colorism to be discussed in a piece of work not only where it is involved but is written by the same author who coined the term….Do y’all hear how y’all sound?

[rhaenyra]

TROY MARSHALL in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

[lifemod17]

One of the most iconic performance ever

📸: Justine Willard

Greek Theater, Berkeley || 10/22/2019

[abrandnewshadow]

03/29/2008 the rialto theater tuscon az

pookie_ray on lj

[catcheroflies]

james potter, mary macdonald and peter pettigrew would be theater kids i don’t make the rules.