ANONYMOUS (10-Minute) 2W
An anonymous visual artist reaches viral fame.
Sick of rejection and her career seeming to go nowhere, Noelle Hardisohn, a visual artist, makes a bold move. It worked! Everybody is eager to buy the art of this bold talent. But why don’t they know she’s Black? Why don’t they know her name?
BLOODY WHITE CHICKENS AND ROYAL STORK GIN (Full-length) 5W 4M
Mama Balima is accused of being a witch when her nephew dies mysteriously; she is stoned and banished to a witch camp with many elderly women, like herself. Comfort, her granddaughter is forced to put dreams of marriage aside to care for her grandmother in one of Ghana’s six camps. Sharifa West, an American doctor, with hopes of making a change in a small Northern Ghanaian village, finds she may have to look at the world through a different lens. Bloody White Chickens and Royal Stork Gin explores culture, traditions, care for the elderly, and spiritual life.
CHASING THE STORM (Full-length) 3M 3/4W
It’s some time in the future when the earth suffers from major droughts. Aquah, a young black woman, is a Devlin, able to chase the storms and predict where the next body of water will be. Abioh, like many others, has left the compounds of the earth’s edge, venturing into the desert, hoping to find signs of a new way of life. As the government tries to contain the populace, water, and food is rationed, many losing their lives, a new leader is being born. Chasing The Storm explores reluctant leadership, claiming one’s gifts, and carving a new world.
FRIDA AND REMEDIOS (10-Minute) 3W
Alejandra, a visual artist, cannot create. She is mired in despair. But no one has suffered more than the great Frida Kahlo. They row together in a gondola and sing songs as Leonardo Da Vinci sails by. Heath Ledger has got Alejandra thinking. Remedios Varo calls her an exquisite corpse. This a short surrealistic story about despair and creating art.
HEDDA AND GEORGE ( 110 Minutes) 4W 3M
Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is given a fresh examination with a vivid world and natural dialogue about Black life. Comparatively, Hedda and George is humanist work, rendered with kindness. Newlyweds Hedda and George, just back from a six-month honeymoon in Ghana, bought Maya Angelou’s iconic home in Harlem and are inspired to tackle conversations on class, conflict, and love with three generations. Issues of race, legacy and Black trauma simmer beneath the surface, just waiting to be sparked like a slow burn on a hot stove. It reads like a classic as it pays tribute and monument to Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin.
HEDDA: A PORTRAIT OF A (YOUNG) WOMAN (Full-length) 4M 2W
The eponymous "plain ol' crazy" hellcat of Ibsen's classic play is given a fresh reexamination through music, movement, dueling, and a Greek chorus. Tackling emptiness, mental illness, and those flaky friends you used to have in college, Hedda: A Portrait of a (Young) Woman explores the price of freedom and the story of one woman's journey to find liberation within the confinements of her mind.
JAKE (One-Act) 2M
...is the story of Samuel, a father, trying to raise, understand, and provide for his son Jake, who is labeled as a Dyslexic, with ADHD tendencies, and exhibits troubling social behaviors. The final straw is that Jake has been kicked out of a prestigious private school for boys with learning disabilities. Samuel was told that Jake could not return until he tries medication for Jake. Samuel refuses to medicate his son. He decides to try a new approach. Away from the toxic city, he is tethered to his son, and finds that they are much alike.
JAROCK MASH-UP (Full-length) 6W 5M
A collision of DanceHall, Dey-O Deeeyyy-O!, graffiti, f%cking Christopher Columbus and his gringo son Ferdinand, rape, the Tainos, the Africans, globalization, pillage (Sorry…, colonization!), breadfruit trees, Chiquita bananas, bodacious girls choppin’ de grass, a duppy that watches, and a family's search that takes them beyond Jamaica's Belvedere Mountains. JaRock Mash-UP has evocative language that embraces the complexities of race, culture, and globalization through the lens of the third world. It indeed reflects the diversity of immigrant stories, the society we live in, and unique in its cultural perspective.
LES FRÉRES (Full-length) 4M 1W
Inspired by Lorainne Hansberry’s Les Blancs, Les Fréres tells the story of three estranged brothers of Haitian descent, who come home to Harlem for their father’s final days. Troubled memories filled with anger and abuse come rushing back as they deal with their father’s death. They are forced to deal with how each chooses to deal with memories, how each have escaped, feelings of abandonment, betrayal, and loss. Finally, the end asks two of the brothers if they will escape back into the lives they have forged for themselves or will they try to make new life amongst the embers of pain. The play deals with issues of race and culture, family, and identity. Eugene O'Neill and Bay Area Festival Semi-Finalist.
LOS SAMARITANOS (Full-length) 5M 3W
It’s 2010. The heat of the immigration crisis. Denver, a Mexican-American man manages a gas station in an Arizona town, near the Mexico border. He dreams of changing his luck, heading out to California, and starting a new life with his pregnant wife, Rosa. As Mexicans seek the American dream on foot and bicycle, and good samaritans risk their lives crossing illegals along the border of Sasabe, tensions rise high, questioning the high price we pay for our dreams.
MAN IN THE MOON (One-Act) 2W 2M
Octavia meets in bursts of time with the Man in the Moon, while her husband Bruce finds peace in the headlines and the routine of his day. Her mother finds comfort in the practical until an encounter in Starbucks. Can a trip to Home Depot take us to the stars? This is a story about purpose, God, and Jeffrey, the scooter guy.
MARIBELLA (10-Minute) 4W
…While well-meaning, the laws reinforce the idea that some mothers are “bad” and should give up their children so that "good" parents can raise them.
Marisol is 17 and she had a baby named Maribella. Her mother didn't even know. Cristobal started barking and two Mexican sisters found Maribella in a plastic bag. Isabella says "The last time I saw Marisol on FaceBook. She was happy."
NAPOLEON WRASSE (10-Minute) 2M 1W 1Fluid Gender playing a 9-year-old
Napoleon Wrasse: is the most beautiful and regal of the humphead wrasse clan. He looked up one day and noticed they are becoming extinct. His friend Willem, who works for the World Wildlife Fund has invited him and his clan to the CITIES Conference, where there are others like him fighting for endangered species. When Napoleon presents this to the clan, he quickly realizes that not everyone is as hopeful, nor do they trust humans. Napoleon Wrasse explores issues of leadership and advocacy and the beauty of the humphead wrasse
ON WASHINGTON BLVD ( 60 Minutes) 7W 2M or 9W
It's a remarkably warm morning outside Cobo Hall in Detroit, when Kristian Fogarty, lead singer of 69Roses, protest with five other pro-lifers. Amongst them is the emergent 17-year-old feminist, Kathy; all in search of Bacon. As they chant, eat borscht, and make signs, they share their fears and their lives.
OUT OF THE NARROW PLACE ( 140 Minutes) 3W 2M 1M/W
Out of the Narrow Place tells the story of young interracial/interfaith couple, burgeoning in their individual careers, living in present-day Brooklyn and the tensions they navigate within their respective families. Just as they clumsily traverse traditional and generational ideas, death changes the course of their lives. This play deals with family, leadership, Jewish-ness, and loving unconditionally.
SHIRLEY AND IRIS (10 Minutes) 2W
Shirley is a retired 75-year-old woman who recently lost her husband. Just as Shirley is ready to start a new chapter in her life, she is now charged to care for her mother 96-year-old mother, Iris. As Iris struggles to hold on to her fading independence, she forgets to eat, take her medication, and battles with a daughter who makes her feel like a child, ultimately forcing these women to forge a connection, lost over the years. Shirley and Iris explores aging, caretaking, and what it is to love.
STRADDLING THE EDGE (Full-length) 5M 3W 3M/W
Sophia is a Caribbean American wife and mother in her 40’s, in search of identity and a sense of purpose. Cephas is Sophia’s hard-working husband trying his best to navigate the demands of what it is to be a supportive husband, often failing, it seems. The search is obstructed by a brother shot by an angry black youth, a father who can’t remember her name, and a mother determined to make Sophia into a beauty queen, ultimately forging an identity of her own making. Straddling the Edge explores identity and relationships. Barbour Award Finalist.
THE DREAMER'S SON. EUGENE (60+ Minutes) 3M 3W
Eugene is a 16-year-old obsessed with numbers and A320s. He’s autistic. Alfred Allmers put everything aside in the wake of a dream, deciding he could do better by his son. Eugene. But our children aren’t always what we expect or want them to be. The Dreamer’s Son. Eugene. Based on Ibsen’s Little Eyolf is about family, autism, what it takes to be good parents, and how ugly we can be when we don’t like the cards we are dealt with.
THE FAGGOTS' KISS (One-Act) 3M 2W 1M/W
Jonathan Savescu is a 28-year-old sculptor and videographer He is a prodigy. Hayden Albert, a gay philanthropist commissions Jonathan to create a piece of art for a privately owned public atrium for downtown South Orange. When Jonathan presents a controversial sculpture called The Faggots’ Kiss, we quickly learn that South Orange is not as liberal as it pretends. The Faggots’ Kiss explores bias and the controversy of public art.
THE ISLAND BULL'S WIFE (Full-length) 4W 3M
A surreal fable with music, song, and dance. Mary, a sensible young woman, sells her voice, her gift of storytelling and healing, for beauty, and a chance to win the heart of Islan Bulova. But is that enough to keep the Island Bull? This is a fantastical story about valuing ourselves and our gifts, and the price we pay when we discard them. A Princess Grace Awards semi-finalist.
THE TRIAL OF AMOS 'N' ANDY (Full-length) 1W 9M
NOTE: If budgets allow, an all female quartet of musicians/singers can provide the music and sound effects.
The Trial of Amos 'n' Andy focuses on a little known battle that took place in 1932 between Robert Vann, the crusading publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, his small band of reporters, and Freeman Gosden the creator of “Amos ’n’ Andy”, the most popular (and one of the most racist) shows in American broadcast history. It tells the story of how this small Black newspaper launched a nationwide campaign to force the "Amos ’n’ Andy" radio program off the air. It is a rivalry story concerned with the struggle for self-definition and respect. The play is like an old-time radio show where the scenes flow one into another, the ensemble of actors render characters and remind us of foley artists creating sound effects. Lights and soundscapes will move us from one world to another. This play is a work of fiction. While some characters have real-life counterparts, their characterizations and the incidents in which they are depicted are products of the imagination and not a work of biography or history.
TOUCH (One-Act) 4W 2M
Two friends, in group. Two brothers, in law. One is Lenny Kravitz handsome. Two friends, living together with Javvy. Mari is 17 and way too young for Paco. Julie tells Ramone her needs. And Gineiris takes a chance with Cami. This play is about loneliness. It's about friendship. It's about family. It's about reaching out and searching for connective-ness.
WATERMELON TROPES (One-Act) 4W 4M
Based on a true story. At a wealthy high school, seniors play a prank on the African American dean, leaving watermelons in her office. Who knew an apology would be demanded, the New York Times would report, and a protest would ensue? … over a few watermelons!? Watermelon Tropes explores the importance of inclusive history and the tropes of Black Americana.
THE WHITE HORSE (Full-length) 4W 2M
A rough but beautiful draft of an adaptation of Ibsen's Rosmersholm. Nat never had a great relationship with his father, and then he upped and died on him, Nat swore that things would be different with his kids. So, here he is, staring cancer in the face, not a pot to piss in, and no one to wipe his ass. Go figure!
