#Black Playwrights

[writemarcus]

Dev Bondarin is directing a reading of my kitchen-sink dramedy TUMBLEWEED with the UP Theater Company (www.uptheater.org). The reading will take place on Sunday, January 21st at 3pm at Ft. Washington Collegiate Church located at 729 W. 181st St. (1 train to 181st).

Kirby Fields, artistic director of the UP Theatre Company recently spoke with the Manhattan News recently about their Dead of Winter series: ‘Fields says it is particularly gratifying to establish relationships with writers. Marcus Scott, who wrote the third play in the series, “Tumbleweed,” came to a staged reading last year. Then he sent Fields a number of his own plays.

“This guy is just bursting with ideas,” said Fields. “He’s pulling from philosophy, pop culture…he’s culling from all different racial dynamics on stage and putting them all together.” Directed by Dev Bondarin, the play revolves around a young Black woman with “hair like a tumbleweed” who tries to reconcile different standards of beauty.’

👩🏾‍🦱👩🏿‍🦱👩🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱👩🏿‍🦱👩🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱👩🏿‍🦱👩🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱👩🏿‍🦱👩🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱👩🏿‍🦱👩🏽‍🦱👩🏾‍🦱👩🏿‍🦱👩🏽‍🦱

Read the story: Manhattan Times

[personal-blog243]

I don’t want to give too much about myself away here but…

there is a musical called “Urinetown” that has some decent social commentary about poverty and policing and things like that, and “1776” had some pretty good commentary about America. Other than that most musicals fall REALLY flat when they try to have a progressive message.

There are plays written by POC playwrights that address themes of racism and class conflict better than the big name musicals you’ve heard of.

Try August Wilson, Lynn Nottage, and Amiri Baraka, and David Henry Hwang

u ever think abt the irony that so many broadway shows are abt poverty and yet…. ppl in poverty can’t see them….. 

[tbd6]

Danai Gurira (wearing Gabriela Hearst) and her father at the Grey Goose suite at the US Open

[lionheartamelia]

Happy birthday to the beautiful Danai Gurira❤️

[yourdailyqueer]

Amber Ruffin

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: 9 January 1979

Ethnicity: African American

Occupation: Comedian, screenwriter, writer, playwright, presenter, actress, producer

Note: First Black woman to write for a late-night network talk show in the United States.

[blackstarlineage]

Abdias do Nascimento (1914–2011) was a Brazilian intellectual, activist, politician, artist, playwright, and Pan-Africanist who dedicated his life to the fight against Afro-Brazilian oppression, racism, and cultural erasure. He was one of the most important figures in the Afro-Brazilian civil rights movement, advocating for Black self-determination, racial equality, and the recognition of African heritage in Brazilian society.

Born in Franca, São Paulo, to a working-class Afro-Brazilian family, Nascimento grew up witnessing the deep-rooted racism and racial exclusion that shaped Brazil’s post-slavery society. In the 1930s, he became involved in Black resistance movements, joining the Frente Negra Brasileira (Brazilian Black Front), the first Black political organization in Brazil. His activism intensified after serving in the military, where he saw firsthand the systemic discrimination against Black soldiers.

In 1944, he founded the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN) or Black Experimental Theater, an organization that sought to challenge racial stereotypes, elevate Black identity, and empower Afro-Brazilian artists. At a time when Brazilian theater mostly featured Black people in degrading or servile roles, TEN provided a platform for Black actors and playwrights to reclaim their narratives, helping to advance Black cultural representation in Brazil.

Nascimento’s activism extended beyond the arts. He was a staunch Pan-Africanist, drawing inspiration from global Black liberation movements, including Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and the African independence struggles. He saw Brazil’s racial democracy as a myth, arguing that the country maintained white supremacy through economic and social exclusion rather than explicit segregation, similar to the United States’ Jim Crow system.

Because of his activism, Nascimento was persecuted by Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985) and spent years in exile in the United States and Africa, where he engaged with international Black liberation movements. During his time abroad, he worked with leaders in the Pan-African and African Diaspora movements, strengthening ties between Brazil and the broader global struggle for Black empowerment.

After returning to Brazil, Nascimento entered politics, becoming a senator and congressman, where he fought for Afro-Brazilian rights, land reform, and policies to combat systemic racism. His work influenced the adoption of affirmative action policies, racial quotas, and the recognition of Black identity in Brazil's national consciousness.

As a scholar and writer, he published numerous works, including “O Genocídio do Negro Brasileiro” (The Genocide of the Black Brazilian), where he argued that Brazil’s racial policies aimed at erasing Black identity through assimilation rather than overt oppression.

Nascimento’s legacy as a revolutionary thinker, Pan-Africanist, and defender of Afro-Brazilian identity continues to inspire activists fighting for racial justice in Brazil and across the African diaspora. His life's work was centered on empowering Black people, reclaiming African cultural heritage, and exposing the hidden realities of racism in Brazil.

[inamindfarfaraway]

It's both funny and increasingly annoying to me when Hatchetfield fans associate Bill with Blinky, the way Paul is associated with Pokey and Ted with Tinky, but leave out Alice. She was there in Watcher World too! Her eyes were also purple! She was also controlled to try to kill her family! There is no way you can think of “Watcher World” without remembering Alice's equal involvement in Blinky's scheme.

I'd argue that she's a much better fit for Blinky's special human. He forms a grudge against her for insulting and disobeying him ("Fuck you, Blinky", "You'll be sorry"), just like Pokey's fixation on Paul because he defied him. She has a theme of watching going on herself, in contrast to Bill's naivety and obliviousness: being perceptive enough to notice the creepy, suspicious elements of Watcher World; trying to use observation as a tool to control Deb's behaviour, Blinky's modus operandi (though I personally like to believe that Deb didn't actually cheat and Blinky was tricking her); and having a connection with social media in general, which Blinky is thematically similar to and embodies the worst, most harmful elements of. She's deeply self-conscious, concerned with her reputation to her peers and has an anxiety disorder. She’s always worrying about how people see her and feels pressured to act in certain ways by that, which is exactly what Blinky wants in his prey, just like how Linda is Nibby's ideal hungry Honey Queen. She's interested in theatre and wants to be a playwright, to write shows where people will passively watch characters struggle and suffer for their own entertainment. Blinky creates live plays too - he even proudly says “Welcome to the show!" when the father and daughter's duel begins. She knows how to manipulate people by showing them what they want to see, giving her script draft a tragic ending for the queer main characters that's more likely to get it accepted in the discriminatory industry, when in fact she wants to change the ending once she has more power.

And she alone defeats her Lord in Black. Pokey assimilates Paul. Tinky breaks and owns Ted. Nibbly consumes Linda. Wiggly completely enslaves Linda and leads her to her death, and Wiley is unshakeable from his allegiance to him. But Alice? She overcomes the mind control, pushes through her panic attack, shoots Bliklotep in his all-seeing eye and goes home with her dad. And lets go of her independent issues with perception and image by putting down her phone.

She is so much like Blinky, and so much his perfect victim. Except that she wants happy endings. For the characters in her stories, for herself and for the people she loves. And she has the strength to make them come true. She's Blinky's equal and opposite. The hero to his villain. She can do everything he can, on a human scale, but she believes in happy endings.

I know the fandom likes the 'CCRP eldritch horrors’ favourites gang', and that is fun. But give Alice the respect she deserves! I see her as Blinky's Ted while Bill is his Pete; also a valued toy, but more by proxy than in his own right.

[tllgrrl]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jocelyn Bioh (@jjbioh)

I was today years old when I found out that Jocelyn Bioh —writer of the Tony Award nominated play “Ja-Ja’s African Hair Braiding” —is a writer/consulting producer of Star Wars “The Acolyte”!!

See, when you have Black writers and producers behind the camera, sometimes you get Black characters and things like this:

And it’s a beautiful, story-enriching thing.

(BTW, Ms. Bioh’s play is still on Broadway, and one of the stars is Dominique Thorne, our very own Riri Williams aka Ironheart!)

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Lynn Nottage

Lynn Nottage was born in 1964 in Brooklyn, New York. Nottage won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play, Ruined. In 2017, she won this award again for her play, Sweat. This made Nottage the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. She has won several other awards in her career, including the Francesca Primus Prize, the Steinberg Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for her 2003 play, Intimate Apparel.

[do-you-know-this-play]

[pynkhues]

Anon from earlier about Sam's family. Thanks for letting me know that tribe was an offensive term for the Aboriginal people. I'm not Australian and didn't know. I apologize. And yes, people were using that term on twitter when talking about it. It's all in very bad faith.

(x)

You're very welcome, anon, and I appreciate the acknowledgement. I figured it was probably the terminology being used, and you just didn't know, but it's really kind of you to own it, apologise and be open to learning.

I'm kind of a bit lucky in this sense, because I have a few Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander friends from across different Nations, and I work with a lot of First Nations people in different capacities (actors, writers and artists at the theatre company, of course, but one of my areas of specialisation as a freelance writer is in people-related safety, so I have a - - mm, I don't want to say expertise, because I think this is a space you're always learning in, but perhaps an area of qualification (?) in writing about child safety, gender-based safety in the workplace, and racial and cultural safety, particularly with First Nations people, in which I usually work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to develop documents on what helps them to feel safe in different contexts. I've written these sorts of things for schools, health services and arts venues, so I have a lot of conversations with people in different capacities too. I'm also on the theatre I work at's Reconciliation Action Working Group, so yes! Having a lot of robust conversations every day, haha).

But yeah. It's quite telling to me that someone would stress a level of 'care' over what happened to those First Nations people while using a term that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would consider a slur. To do that level of research into a family Sam could possibly be related to, and then to weaponise a community while calling that community something they'd find derogatory just makes it beyond obvious what the intentions behind it are. It would take two minutes to look up any of the many, many guides that exist about this, but those communities aren't who they actually care about. They're just grist for the mill.

[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

[kebriones]

Socrates: I'll come down to Piraeus to see you off. And now before I leave... (looking at him with admiration) What pity that I can't come with you like *BLACKED OUT TEXT*

Alcibiades: (hugging him) I'm choked by emotion, teacher.

Socrates: (admiring him with pride) And I by pride!

okay but what is this blacked out text wtf I can't make out what's underneath, someone Really wanted to erase that.

[tbd6]

Danai Gurira at the Moet & Chandon Clubhouse suite at the US Open 

[yourdailyqueer]

Angelina Weld Grimké (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 27 February 1880  

RIP: 10 June 1958

Ethnicity: African American, white

Nationality: American

Occupation: Journalist, writer, teacher, playwright, poet

Note: First African-American women to have a play publicly performed.

[spikeironfoundersson]

Guys. GUYS.

2023’s Black List (the most popular un-produced screenplays in Hollywood) has dropped, and it has a screenplay based on the making of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

Yes, THAT Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Broadway’s most expensive flop of all time. With Greek mythology and Julie Taymor and fucking U2.

The screenplay is called Boy Falls From Sky and it’s written by Hunter Toro and it’s very funny and well-researched. Please enjoy, and tag your fan-casts for these roles because I’m so hyped by this potentially being made someday.

Read it HERE