9th Annual The Fire This Time Festival Lineup Announced

Now in its ninth season, the Obie Award winning The Fire This Time Festival will kick off on Monday, January 15 with an opening night reception at The Kraine Theater and continue with a special off-site event and panel discussion at Atlantic Theater Company on Wednesday, January 17, followed by full-length play readings and the 10-Minute Play Festival, directed this year by Candis Jones.

All performances will take place at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery) unless otherwise noted. Tickets ($5-$25) are available for advance purchase at www.horseTRADE.info.

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Sip, Celebrate, Share, Repeat: A Wine and Cheese Social with The Fire This Time Community

Monday, January 15 @ 7pm

Join us for the opening night event of Season 9 of The Fire This Time Festival by mixing and mingling with TFTT artists from our past nine years. Meet artists who are writing for television, enjoying off-Broadway runs, completing fellowship programs, or in the writer's room working on that next piece. Come and share your experiences as an artist, how you are "making it," and what resources are necessary for your survival. Let's pull each other up together through celebration, conversation, and community!

TFTT at Atlantic Theater Company

Wednesday, January 17 @ 7:30pm

Atlantic Stage 2 (330 W 16th St)

Join The Fire This Time Festival for a performance of the World Premiere play The Homecoming Queen by playwright Ngozi Anyanwu (in her off-Broadway debut), directed by Awoye Timpo (a TFTT season 4 director) followed by a special panel discussion on Access in the Arts.

The theatre world is currently enjoying a spate of new works by artists of color. One of those is Ngozi Anyanwu's production of The Homecoming Queen at Atlantic Theater Company, which was partially developed in The Fire ThisTime's inaugural New Works Lab program in 2015. How do we continue this pipeline of new works? How can large theatre institutions find these plays/playwrights? How does an artist of color go from page to stage, and how do pipeline organizations like The Fire This Time aid in continuing to usher in and introduce these new plays/playwrights to the wider theatre world?

Join playwright of The Homecoming Queen Ngozi Anyanwu, Atlantic Theater Company's Director of New Play Development, Abigail Katz, and Kelley Girod and Cezar Williams of The Fire This Time Festival, along with other industry insiders as they discuss access for artists of color in the theatre industry, and offer insight on getting a script from the page to the stage.

10-Minute Play Festival $25

Directed by Candis Jones

Thu 1/18, Fri 1/19, Sat 1/20, Fri 1/26 & Sat 1/27 @ 7pm; Sun 1/28 @ 3pm

The Rider by Mona Washington

Ade Ogunbade and Julia Ford Williams are very much in love and engaged. However, Ade wants a pre-nuptial agreement. Much to his surprise, Julia agrees. Her only condition? She wants to add a rider. Can love be contracted? Will their cultural differences and emotional sensitivities prevent their union? The Rider explores these questions and more.

The House by Charly Evon Simpson

The need to decide what to do with their father's house brings siblings B and Jackie together on a cold winter afternoon.

BLACK, WHITE & BLUE by William Watkins

A black motorist. A white cop. A bystander who is far from innocent. Which truth will you believe? BLACK, WHITE & BLUE explores the deadly stereotypes that make us all slaves to fear.

Anonymous by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif

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?

Poppy by Shelley Fort

A young girl runs away from home and finds herself on an adventure through NYC. After she falls asleep on a bus, she wakes up in a courtroom and is forced to confront the reason she ran away. A nightmare or reality? Poppyexplores loss of innocence and the cost of being a bold, fearless young woman in today's society.

The Falling Man By Gethsemane Herron-Coward

The Falling Man is inspired by Richard Drew's infamous photograph. Two women war with a journalist in the aftermath of their father's absence post 9/11 New York. The Falling Man asks how one mourns a man who won't return, a man who was half stolen to begin with.

Heirloom - A full-length play reading

Written & Directed by Karen Chilton

Sunday, January 21 @ 5pm $5

When siblings, Camille and Wynn, discover a portrait of their recently deceased grandmother painted by renowned artist Archibald Motley, they are forced to reconcile her will where everything was left to Wynn, though Camille was her primary caretaker. An emotional tug-of-war ensues where years of repressed conflicts between them surface as they struggle to navigate their grief and make sense of all that was left behind. Set in Chicago's historic Bronzeville neighborhood and shifting time periods from present day to the late 1930s, Heirloom's central theme of sibling rivalry is explored through the lens of colorism and racism, while taking into account the emotional 'inheritance' passed down from one generation to the next.

Sweet Chariot - A full-length play reading

Written by Jordan E. Cooper, Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb

Monday, January 22 @ 7pm $5

A young gay man and his family are forced to grapple with their dark past on the morning of a catastrophic storm.

Stand and Wait - A full-length play reading

Written by by Eliana Pipes, Directed by Cristina Angeles

Tuesday, January 23 @ 7pm $5

Inspired by Paula Dean's 2013 comments fantasizing about wanting to have an Antebellum South themed wedding with "historically appropriate wait staff," Stand and Wait follows a seasoned black actress and a naïve white actress who make friends in an audition waiting room, only to be handed a script that caters to America's worst racial instincts.

Final Arrangements - A full-length play reading

Written by Michelle Tyrene Johnson, Directed by Cate Cammarata

Thursday, January 25 @ 7pm $5

Two very different women who bump into each other at the funeral parlor, making plans to unknowingly bury the same husband.

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Candis Jones (Director) is a director and devised theatre artist. Select credits include: Colony (The Movement/NYU Festival of Voices), Name Calling (The Kennedy Center, Dance Place), 48hrs in Harlem (Harlem 9, NBT), The Homecoming Queen workshop (New Harmony Project), New Shoes (Drama League Directorfest), Morning in America (Primary Stages), Black Girl Magic (National Black Theatre), TEMBO! (Zanzibar International Film Festival), Daughters of the Bayou (Weeksville Heritage Center).Assistant Director: Oedipus El Rey (The Public Theater), f-ing A (Signature Theater), The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (NY City Center), The Death of the Last Black Man (Signature Theatre). Candis is a proud Drama League Alumni and recipient of the NYWF 2016 Lilly Award. www.candiscjones.com

The Fire This Time Festival Playwright Kelley Nicole Girod founded the festival in 2009 to provide rising playwrights of African and African American descent a platform to write and develop new work. The festival was conceived as an opportunity for playwrights to write and produce material that reflects diverse perspectives as 21st Century Theater artists. With ongoing momentum, TFTT has quickly become a destination for diverse audiences, producers, and artists seeking new possibilities and opportunities in contemporary theater. www.firethistimefestival.com

FRIGID New York @ Horse Trade is a theater development group with a focus on new work that produces a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater every season. FRIGID's Resident Artist Program offers a home to a select group of Independent theater artists, pooling together a great deal of talent and energy. FRIGID New York grew out of the annual FRIGID Festival, the first and only festival of its kind in New York City to offer artists 100% of their box office proceeds, and Horse Trade Theater Group, a self-sustaining theater development and management group. www.horseTRADE.info