Saturday, November 18, Tylie Shider had a staged reading of his new play Shoptalk, about the transformative power of salons, at ArtYard in Frenchtown, NJ. Tylie was in our program during Year Two and is the inaugural ArtYard Playwright Fellow. https://artyard.org/.../tylie-shider-shoptalk-staged.../

On Friday, November 17, Johnny G. Lloyd had a reading of his play THE PROBLEM WITH MAGIC, IS:, at Ars Nova. He developed this play, that he describes as "a fantastical exploration on family, gentrification, time, and what it means to be home," while with us in Year Three. 

Deneen Reynolds-Knott, from Year Two,  is one the four playwrights who will be developing projects in The Fire This Time's New Works Lab program which is co-faciliated and directed by Cynthia Grace Robinson and A.J. Muhammad. 

Double congratulations go out to Marcus Scott, a playwright in Year Two, who has had one of his plays published and will receive a workshop reading of another. His play Sundown Town is in the latest issue of Obsidian, a journal of Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora (available in print or digital format https://obsidianlit.org/48-1-toc/). Later this week, Sibling Rivalries, the play he wrote while in residency with us, will have a reading at A.R.T./New York in Manhattan. 

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ new version of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha tells the story of a love that surpasses death. On June 14, 1904, Joplin, the future “King of Ragtime,” married Freddie Alexander, an educated and refined 20-year-old, at her family home in Little Rock. Ten weeks later, she was dead of pneumonia. “She has died but is not gone,” says Treemonisha director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj. “It’s the eternal love that when someone passes on, they don’t leave you—they stay on and become part of you.” Freddie became her widower’s muse. Joplin could hear her voice in his mind, telling him he would become famous. He transmuted his grief into Treemonisha when he composed and wrote the libretto in 1907. Treemonisha opens OTSL’s 2023 festival season on May 20 and runs through June 24. Composer Damien Sneed and librettist Karen Chilton have enriched the original opera with a prologue and epilogue, making the love story between Scott and Freddie an opera within the opera. 

Playwrights’ Center announced the 2023–24 McKnight Fellows in Playwriting and the 2023–24 McKnight National Residency & Commission recipient. These fellowships, generously supported by the McKnight Foundation, are important components of the array of opportunities that Playwrights’ Center offers to playwrights at all stages of their careers. The McKnight Fellows in Playwriting for next season included our 2020/21 resident Gethsemane Herron.

Shawn Christopher Lovell Nabors, a playwright in the first year of our Writing Residency Program, is now a filmmaker (in addition to being an actor, singer, songwriter, etc.). He is producing a short film, Daddy, that tells the story of one man's strong desire to become a parent the natural way, by getting pregnant.  

Shawn has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for his project and if you'd like to contribute and find out more, click on the link: https://www.supportourstory.com/daddyshortfilm

My play Antiquated Fuckery will be performed at 59E59 - Theater C - October 2-29th 2023 

Yay! I start tomorrow! MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage at Northwestern University! A very big thank you to Heather Helinsky, Bernard Tarver, and Steve Wallace!

Reverie Theatre Group, of Pawtucket RI, has named Brysen Boyd, a member of this year's Writing Residency Program, as their Resident Playwright. Over the next year, he will collaborate with them to create new stage productions. It should be an exciting opportunity. You can follow that company on their Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/reverietheatregroup

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Congratulations Calley Anderson, a member of our current Writing Residency Program, who has been selected for the 2022 I AM SOUL Playwright Residency with the National Black Theatre.

This 18 month residency is one of three programs that comprise the SOUL Series LAB (Liberating Artistic Bravery) Residency Programs run by NBT, the others being the SOUL Producing Residency, and SOUL Directing Residency.

This year's cohort of artists will officially start their residencies on Tuesday, September 6th. Each resident is provided a financial stipend, professional development, dramaturgical and developmental resources, and a full production team.

Nathaniel Johnson, a playwright in Year One of the Writing Residency Program, will have excerpts from his play, Quarters, Halves, and the Whole, presented as part of “A Night of Comedy Honoring HBCU’s” at The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) in Dallas, TX.  The play, which he was working on while in residency, follows the lives of four freshmen attending HBCU’s and the joy and anxiety that comes in the freedom of that first year of independence.