Come enjoy readings of five short plays, written especially for (Writ)ual Mix by Dennis A. Allen II, Keelay Gipson, Amina Henry, Goldie Patrick, and Liza Jessie Peterson and directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges and Derrick Sanders!

Reservations are free, but required!

For more information, visit the website or email [email protected].

Dennis A. Allen II (short play commission, director, A Freeky Introduction) is a multi-hyphenate in the world of theatre. As a playwright, his play The Mud is Thicker in Mississippi won the 35th annual Off Off Broadway Samuel French Festival. He is the recipient of Atlantic Theater Company’s inaugural Launch Commission, Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writer’s Group, and National Black Theatre’s “I Am Soul” Playwright Residency. Allen is an associate producer for The New Black Fest and serves as the National Playwriting Program Chair for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Region 1. He is an adjunct professor at LaGuardia Community College, Montclair State University, and The New School, and is the Co-Program Director for the MFA Playwriting program at Brooklyn College. Dennis received his MFA from Brooklyn College’s Playwriting program.

Keelay Gipson is an Afro-Surrealist writer/director and professor whose plays include demons. (The Bushwick Starr) The Red and the Black (O’Neill Finalist), #NEWSLAVES (Princess Grace Finalist), imagine Sisyphus happy (P73 Summer Residency @ Yale), Mary/Stuart, a dramatic queering of Friederich Schiller’s classic play (BAM Next Wave Festival), The Lost Or, How to Just B (Kernodle New Play Award). AWARDS: NYSAF Founders’ Award, Barrington Stage Spark Grant. FELLOWSHIPS: Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble, Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, Lambda Literary New Voices, Playwrights Realm, Dramatist Guild Foundation. RESIDENCIES: MacDowell, City of New York Public Artist in Residence (PAIR), The Hermitage Artist Retreat. Their work has been developed/supported by Roundabout, The Old Globe, Artist Repertory Theater, Bushwick Starr, New York Stage, and Film, Ars Nova, National Black Theater, Rattlestick Playwrights’ Theater, Classical Theater of Harlem, and New York Theatre Workshop.

Amina Henry (short play commission) is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Recent productions include The Animals, Ducklings, Hunter John and Jane and The Johnsons, all at JACK (Brooklyn, NY), P.S. produced by Ars Nova (New York, NY), Little Rapes at Long Island University (The New Group), Nothing, Nothing produced by HERO Theatre (Los Angeles, CA), The Great Novel produced by New Light Theater, Happily Ever at Brooklyn College, Bully produced by Interrobang Theater (Baltimore, MD), Clubbed Thumbs 2019 Winterworks, and SUNY Purchase, among other venues, An American Family Take a Lover, produced by The Cell: a 21st Century Salon and presented by Theatre for the New City (New York, NY), Water and Rent Party produced by Drama of Works (Brooklyn, NY), Cindy and Sleeping Beauty produced by Project Y Theatre. Her work has been produced, developed by and/or presented by: The New Group, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, The Flea, Page 73, Project Y Theatre, National Black Theater, Little Theater at Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Generator, The Brick, Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 2013 Black Swan Lab Series (Ashland, OR), Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX), The Brick, HERE Arts Center, and The Cell: a 21st Century Salon, HERO Theatre. Her work has been featured on The Kilroys List. She has been a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group, Page 73’s Interstate 73, and the 2017-2018 Ars Nova writers group. She was a 2017-2018 recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Space Residency and is a 2018 recipient of a space residency at Dixon Place. She is a 2020 recipient of the Sarah Verdone Writing Award and is an affiliate artist of New Georges. She is a member of the Women’s Project 2022-2024 Lab.

Goldie E. Patrick (short play commission) is a playwright/TV writer and director based in New York City originally from Detroit and a proud alumna of Howard University (BFA) and Columbia University (MFA-playwriting). She is the inaugural Black Creation Playwright in residence at The New Federal Theatre, a Generative Theater Black Seed resident at 651Arts, and a former APAP Emerging Artist cohort member. She recently directed and had one of her plays included in the 13th Annual Fire This Time Festival. She is currently a TV staff writer and a proud member of the WGA East. Goldie is currently the Director of Grants and Programming at the Dramatist Guild Foundation. Her works include Fish Fry (New Federal Theatre)," #LakeishaJefferson" (Fire This Time Festival), “Breath of Life” (Ensemble Studio Theater One Act Marathon/Columbia University), HERstory Love Forever Hip Hop (Kennedy Center), Name Calling (Theater Alliance)

Liza Jessie Peterson (short play commission) is an artivist; actress, playwright, poet, author, and youth advocate who has worked steadfastly with incarcerated populations for more than two decades. Her critically acclaimed one-woman show, The Peculiar Patriot, was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, Elliot Norton and a recipient of a Lilly Award. The play is also available on Audible. Liza performed The Peculiar Patriot in 35 prisons across the country and a documentary, Angola Do You Hear Us; Voices from a Plantation Prison features her historic performance of The Peculiar Patriot at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka Angola) which is streaming on Paramount Plus and Amazon Prime, and was shortlist for an Academy Award. She has developed a TV pilot based on her ensemble play, SistahGurls, and the Squirrel. Liza is the author of a memoir, ALL DAY; A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island (Hachette publishing) was commissioned by The Old Globe Theater to adapt the book into a stage play, and has developed a TV series based on the book. Liza was featured in Ava DuVernay’s Emmy award-winning documentary, The 13th, and was a consultant on Bill Moyers documentary Rikers (PBS). Also known for her exceptional poetic skills, Liza began her poetry career at the Nuyorican Poets Café and appeared on two episodes of HBO’s Def Poetry. Liza appeared in Showtime’s mini-series, Everything’s Gonna Be All White, by Sacha Jenkins. She can be seen in A Luv Tale (BETplus), Love the Hard Way (co-starring with Pam Grier and Adrien Brody) Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, and K. Shalini’s A Drop of Life. Liza wrote and starred in two short films, MERLINA, and Black Love Manifesto. For more info on her projects, visit her website at www.lizajessiep.com

Raelle Myrick-Hodges (co-director, short plays). Raelle’s primary goal in working in live performance is to rebuild community and fight sexism- along the way she has directed some plays. This spring she directed the world in the premier of, Media/Medea by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames in Philadelphia. This world premiere featured two college campuses — one private (Bryn Mawr) and one public (Philadelphia Community College) to work together around privilege, status, and artistic development. She is the founder of Azuka Theater in Philadelphia. Over the past 12 years, she has directed nationally including but not limited to: The Magic Theater, Public Theater, National Black Theater, Indiana Repertory, and Atlanta Shakespeare Company, among others. She is a self-taught theater artist on the spectrum with no arts degree, yet, Raelle is also a Master Teacher/Adjunct Professor with Actor’s Studio, PACE University, Brown University, and recently finished a Master Teacher residency with Cornell University. Her work during the pandemic included all non-binary Coriolanus adapted by Sean San Jose for UNCSA, as well as working on her 2023 work-in-progress reflecting on an adult father-daughter relationship, He Has the Prettiest Handwriting, that sold out at The Public Theater in New York. Raelle is currently the Performing Arts Curator for the Charles H. Wright Museum in Detroit. She will be directing in the upcoming season at Magic Theater and will (if the strike ends) filming her first narrative film.

Derrick Sanders (co-director, short plays) is an award-winning director and filmmaker who has recently directed the World Premiere of Penny Candy at Dallas Theatre Center and Twisted Melodies at Baltimore Center Stage, Apollo Theater (NYC), and Mosaic Theatre (Wash., D.C.). Along with The Island and African Company presented Richard III at the American Players Theatre. He has also directed the Washington, D.C., and West Coast premiers of Will Power’s Fetch/Clay Make/Man at Round House Theatre and Marin Theatre Company. He has directed August Wilson’s Fences at Marin Theatre, The Mountaintop at Virginia Stage Company, Clybourne Park, and Beneatha’s Place in repertory for “The Raisin Cycle” at Baltimore Center Stage. Sanders credits include August Wilson’s King Hedley II at Signature Theatre and for “August Wilson’s 20th Century” at the Kennedy Center, August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at Baltimore Center Stage, August Wilson’s Fences and Radio Golf at Virginia Stage, August Wilson’s Jitney and Stick Fly at True Colors Theatre in Atlanta; Sanctified at Lincoln Theater; Gee’s Bend at Cincinnati Playhouse; Topdog/Underdog at American Theatre Company in Chicago; the world premiere of Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money, Bud, not Buddy and Jackie and Me at Chicago Children’s Theatre; and the world premiere of Five Fingers of Funk at Minneapolis Children’s Theatre. Sanders was the assistant director of August Wilson’s world premiere productions of Radio Golf and Gem of the Ocean. As the Founding Artistic Director of Congo Square Theatre, he directed numerous productions and has received multiple awards and accolades for his work. He was named the Chicago Tribune’s Theatre Chicagoan of the Year in 2005. He is the Founder of Chicago’s August Wilson Monologue Competition, which is featured in the film Giving Voice on Netflix. Mr. Sander’s short film Perfect Day, which he wrote and directed, has been screened in more than 20 film festivals around the world and has garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards. He received his BFA from Howard University and MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. Sanders is the Associate Director of Drama at the Juilliard School and is the Director of the National August Wilson New Voices Competition.

MixFest, our annual free reading series exploring and celebrating the abundance of diverse stories in the theater, is BACK! Following Asian American MixFest in 2017, Middle Eastern MixFest in 2018, Immigrant MixFest in 2019, African Caribbean MixFest in 2021, and First Gen MixFest last year, we are delighted to announce (Writ)ual Mix: Traditions of the Diaspora MixFest, a series of readings of new work co-curated by theater artists Daaimah Mubashshir, NSangou Njikam, and Awoye Timpo.

We are excited to present readings of full-length plays by Diane Exavier, Daaimah Mubashshir, NSangou, Njikam, and a.k. Payne! Additionally, we have commissioned Dennis A. Allen II, Keelay Gipson, Amina Henry, Goldie Patrick, and Liza Jessie Peterson to create short one-acts and present them as an evening of readings.

Time: 7:00 pm EDT

Free!

Registration