...home for creative emerging black playwrights
Shona Tucker
Growing Wild
directed by Maria Vail
Musical Direction and Composition by Chic Street Man
​
"I have been the self appointed historian for my family every since I was about seven, when my grandmother, the true griot of our clan, first started telling me stories. Two years ago, Vassar College gave me a grant to do some more formal research on my family tree and I began writing a performance narrative. As I began writing one story another kept pushing itself to the foreground. This story is the harder piece to tell because it is the most immediate, and yet once I opened the valve, it has poured forth from a hidden source deep within my heart." ... discovering a possible key to a 30 year old murder that haunts her family and continues to shape their lives today. A story about race, crime, and urban politics, "Growing Wild", chronicles one African American woman's struggle for power and identity in a city that works against achieving both. ​
Mfoniso Udofia
The Grove
directed by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif
Actors: Axel Avin, Anton Floyd, Dawn-Elin Fraser, Lakisha Michelle May, Janelle Mims , Liz Sklar , Erwine A. Thomas, and Alex Ubokodum.
​
Adiagha Ufot, the eldest daughter and the first generation offspring of a transplanted Nigerian family. She simultaneously serves as the only viable conduit of her rich culture and as her family’s ticket to the American dream. Fracture occurs when Adiagha declares her love to her long time best friend, Kimberley Wallace. Worlds collide, and, Adiagha, the model daughter, is faced with a decision that will change the landscape of her life forever.
Danielle Eliska Lyle
Bottle Trees
directed by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif
Actors: Bernard J. Tarver*, CNiambi Steele*, Ruffin Prentiss, Evander Duck*, Stephen Hill, Araba Brown, and Shereen Macklin
Sammy and Phil have been best friends since childhood, sharing just about everything-- except who they love most. One of them crosses the line of brotherhood, conjuring up all kinds of forces. It takes deceit and revenge to backfire into self-destruction before everyone realizes the power in the spirits.
Joslyn Housley-McLaughlin
The Silver Thread
directed by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif
Actors: *Jim Ireland, *Jordan Kaplan, Brittainy Bellizeare, *Laura E. Johnston, *Lynnette R. Freeman, *Ron Piretti, Doug Rossi, *Heather Massie, and Jeff Pagliano
​
A Confederate country doctor opens his lab to a young slavewoman and an eager medical apprentice who fight to hold onto their humanity in the brutal world of early medicine. Where ambition meets obsession, will they find the human thread that runs through it? Based on true events.
Dennis A. Allen II
Never No In Between
directed by Christopher Burris
Actors: Bernard J. Tarver, Yolonda Ross, Karma Mayet Johnson, Stephen Hill, Manuel Pinkins, Diana Anais, and Jose Joaquin Perez
​
In the wake of their mother's death two brothers' lives are thrown together and the colliding of their worlds threaten to uncover secrets of the past that may destroy both brothers' future.
Magaly Colimon
Destination: Oooh Aaah Yummy!
directed by Lydia Fort
Actors: Hope Clarke, Roz Coleman of Red Wall Productions, Aixa Kendrick, Frank Mayers, Lynesse Page, Maya Lynne Robinson, and Jaime Lincoln Smith
​
The play is set in JFK on New Year's Day during a major snow storm. The young, twenty-something Isa is on the verge of escaping from her mundane life to seeking her "oooh, aaah, yummy." She meets two older, "been there and then some" women, during her transportation limbo, who take her on a journey through questions of life and womanhood. This funny play reveals secrets and our (you too, men!) search for the "yummy".
James Anthony Tyler
Stewart and Lamb
directed by LA Williams
Actors: Sean Turner, Bernard Tarver, Sandra Daley, Kalyne Coleman, Josiah Bania, Daniel Davila, Brandon Hal, John Austin Wiggins
​In 1994 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Zack Lawson, a 63 year old African American military veteran works at Primary Video, a VHS movie rental store. Zack's supervisor is the owner's 25-year old-white-son Ian Philipps, who Zack trained. With the beginning of the 24 hour coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder case in the news, the racial tension that grips the nation also starts to take hold of Primary Video, and when Zack finds out a secret about Ian he uses it to his advantage bringing both men to a painful realization.
Reginald Edmund
South Bridge
directed by Erma Duricko
Actors: Ashley Denise Robinson, Rafael Jordan, Debra Kay Andersen, Tuck Milligan, Meg Anderson and Temesgen Tocrura
​
A white woman is assaulted, an angry mob is at the jail house door screaming for a lynching, and the only way to untangle the truth is for the accused, Christopher C. Davis, to look into the events that lead him to a tree stump in Athens, Ohio, in the year 1881.
Keith Josef Adkins
Pitbulls
directed by Leah Gardiner
Actors: Caroline Clay, Seth Gilliam, Damon Gupton, Will Jackson Harper, and Gwendolyn Mulamba
​
Mary, black and rural, makes wine for a living. She also lives on the edge of a conservative town where pitbulls are the new American mascot. When the mayor’s pitbull is murdered on the Fourth of July, things fall apart and Mary must come face-to-face with the town she hates. Right-wing politics and the liberal-left clash in this play about what’s really at the heart of America.
Other Featured Playwrights:
Mark R. Green
Devonne Heyward
Bernard J. Tarver
Readings@LTC
Vienna Carroll
Singin’ Wid A Sword In Ma Han’
directed by Keith Johnston
​
Based upon historical research, this docudrama uses actual characters, sites, and stories of the Underground Railroad from Vienna’s hometown of York, PA. We see Black activists essential to the success of the Underground Railroad and the crucial role of the Black church in Underground Railroad activity. We discover the existence of Blacks living freely in the southern states and of Maroon societies who raid plantations.
The spirituals, a vital resource about freedom stories like these given the paucity of written documentation, drive the story. Singin’ reveals the Spirituals in their natural and authentic circumstance: in the field, cabin or church, by the river, at the camp meeting, singly or in a group: as expressions of the feeling of the moment, the yearning for spiritual release, the desire for freedom, and information and warnings.
​