Liberation Theatre Company Names Four New Playwrights To Their 2018-2019 Writing Residency Program

Liberation Theatre Company (LTC) a Harlem-based independent theatrical producer and playwright development company established to support emerging Black playwrights, has chosen four promising new writers to participate in their Writing Residency Program for 2018-2019, the second year of the program.

The Writing Residency Program will provide dramaturgical and professional support to these early-career playwrights over a ten-month period, during which time they will each be required to complete a new original full-length play. Public readings of the new plays will be held in the Spring of 2019. For the second year, funding for this initiative has been provided by a grant from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation. Additional funding has also been provided this year by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

"After the phenomenal success of our inaugural year, we chose four distinctly different playwrights, who have some experience but who are also eager to showcase their talents and enhance their skills as writers," said Sandra A. Daley-Sharif, Producing Artistic Director of Liberation Theatre Company. "We had four times as many applicants this year which made our selection process more difficult but in a good way. It speaks to the respect the play writing community has for our theatre company and the value writers place on this opportunity."

"The Writing Residency Program is the active fulfillment of our mission statement. In a very personal, hands-on fashion, we nurture emerging Black playwrights. Without imposing any particular viewpoint on them, we help them figure out what they want to say and how they want to say it as playwrights, while also imparting best writing practices they can use throughout the rest of their career," Daley-Sharif added.

The residency begins in mid-May and includes regular monthly group meetings where writers will share their work and receive constructive criticism; access to theatre events around New York City and artistic mentoring by working professionals. Writers will have the opportunity to collaborate with a director and professional actors during readings of their work, which will conclude the program in February 2019. Each writer will receive an honorarium upon successful completion of the program.

Writers from the first year had public readings of their plays at the Cmore Festival, a collaboration between LTC, Blackboard Reading Series and the cell.

Participants in the Liberation Theatre Company Writing Residency Program for 2018-2019:

Deneen Reynolds-Knott lives in Brooklyn and has developed work with the Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop, Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation, and Rising Circle Theater Collective's 2018 INKtank Lab. Her full-length play, Baton, was selected for Premiere Stages' 2018 Spring Reading Series and the 2017 Playfest at Orlando Shakespeare Company.

Maia Matsushita is a current member of The Fire This Time (TFTT) 2017-18 New Works Lab and part of their Inaugural Writers Group. She wrote for TFTT's Season 8 collaboration with NY Madness. Credits include: "Playwrights Call to Activism" Festival, MITF Short Play Lab, Shades Repertory Theater, The Space Between Theater Company, Bridge Production Group New Works Weekend, Midwinter Madness Short Play Festival, Classical Theatre of Harlem's Playwright Playground, and the National Black Theatre's Keeping Soul Alive Reading Series. She was a recipient of an Emerging Writer Residency at The Wellstone Center in the Redwoods.

Marcus Scott is a playwright, musical theater writer and journalist. Plays include: Tumbleweed (finalist for the 2017/2018 Humanitas Play LA Workshop, the Playwrights Foundation's 2017 Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Cherry Bomb (Drama League's 2017 First Stage Artist In Residence) and Malaise (2017 DUAF at Cherry Lane Theater).

Tylie Shider is an alumnus of The Theater Project's Playwrights Workshop. His work has been selected to participate in the Frank Silvera Writer's Workshop, New Moon Short Play Festival (Luna Stage), Smorgasbord (Joust Theatre Company), New York New Works Theater Festival, and the Think Fast Short Play Competition (Theater Project) where he won Best Play and Audience Favorite. He was awarded the Drama Desk at Delaware State University (BA), just completed his MFA at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Liberation Theatre Company was established in 2009 with the mission to create a home for emerging Black playwrights to develop their work and express themselves artistically in a supportive and focused environment. LTC offers dramaturgical services, professional readings, and for the past seven years has run a successful Black Playwrights Group (BPG). Past BPG members include James Scruggs (3/Fifths), James Anthony Tyler (Dolphins and Sharks) and Dennis A. Allen II (The Mud is Thicker in Mississippi ).

In 2010, LTC initiated Harlem9, a successful collaboration of Black theatre producers in Harlem, which began producing the annual 48Hours in... Harlem 10-minute play festival in August 2011. 48Hours in... Harlem received an Obie Award in 2014, and two anthologies of plays written for the festival have been published and made available to drama schools, libraries and the general public. In December 2016 and April 2018, 48Hours in... El Bronx, was presented in collaboration with Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.

LTC is managed by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif, co-founder and Producing Artistic Director, Spencer Scott Barros, co-founder and Associate Artistic Director, and Bernard J. Tarver, Associate Producing Director.