New York, NY – FRIGID New York will present The Fire This Time Festival Reading Series on Sunday, September 3 at 7pm, Monday, September 11 at 7pm, and Sunday, September 17 at 7pm at The Kraine Theater (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003). Tickets ($10) are available for advance purchase at www.frigid.nyc.
This year The Fire This Time Festival reading series will feature staged readings of full-length plays by playwrights Agyeiwaa Asante, Phillip Christian Smith, and Marcus Scott.
The readings are part of a two-year program The Fire This This Time Festival provides for playwrights from the African diaspora. During their first year, the ten-minute plays of a cohort of Black playwrights are selected to be presented and fully produced in the annual The Fire This Time Festival Ten-Minute Play Program. For their second year, the playwrights are invited back to present a one-night-only developmental staged reading in front of an audience. Many of the plays that are first seen as staged readings at The Fire This Time Festival – including Covenant by York Walker which will receive its world premiere in October 2023 with Roundabout Theatre Company – go on to receive further development and are then produced by regional and off-Broadway theatres. Asante, Smith and Scott all had ten-minute plays that were presented in the 13th annual The Fire This Time Festival 10-Minute Play Program in July 2022.
The Half-Sibling Play by Agyeiwaa Asante
Sunday, September 3 at 7 pm
Vinyl Vanguard by Marcus Scott
Monday, September 11 at 7 pm
Minding Miss Mae Mae by Phillip Christian Smith
Sunday, September 17 at 7 pm
The OBIE Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival was founded in 2009 by 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 ten-minute play program in 2010, presented in collaboration with FRIGID New York, The Fire This Time Festival has produced and developed the work of over 100 playwrights, including Katori Hall, Dominique Morisseau, Radha Blank, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, Jocelyn Bioh, Marcus Gardley, korde arrington tuttle, Stacey Rose, Aziza Barnes, C.A. Johnson, Kevin R. Free, Roger Q. Mason, Charly Evon Simpson, Angelica Cheri, James Anthony Tyler, Jordan E. Cooper, and Nathan Yungerberg.
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 theatre.