Theatre Communications Group Presents TCG Books' First Fridays: Featuring Daniel Alexander Jones and Emily Morse

Theatre Communications Group has announced the sixth iteration of TCG Books' First Fridays, featuring Daniel Alexander Jones (Love Like Light, Particle and Wave) in conversation on Facebook Live, Friday, September 3, 2021 at 7:00pm ET. TCG Books' First Fridays series features authors from TCG Books' roster in conversation about their work on the first Friday of every month.

These conversations are livestreamed on TCG and American Theatre's Facebook pages, as well as TCG's YouTube. Daniel Alexander Jones will be in conversation with Emily Morse, a frequent collaborator and artistic director of New Dramatists. Presented with TCG's Partner Publisher 53rd State Press, the event will feature a discussion about the forthcoming publication of Love Like Light, Jones' collection of plays and performance texts, and the companion volume Particle and Wave.

The inaugural event, held on February 5, 2021, featured Michael R. Jackson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Strange Loop, and the archived video can be found here. The second event was held on March 5, 2021 and featured Dael Orlandersmith, author of Until the Flood, and the archived video can be found here. The third event, which was to feature playwright Young Jean Lee, was reimagined to respond to the rise in Anti-Asian violence by featuring Asian and Pacific Islander artists and organizers, including Young Jean. That event was held on April 2 and can be found here. The fourth event, available here, featured Heidi Schrek, author of What the Constitution Means to Me, in conversation with Paula Vogel, and was presented in partnership with The Center for Fiction. The fifth event, available here, featured Larissa Fasthorse in conversation with Michael John Garcés.

"Daniel Alexander Jones's liberating artistry has been an inspiration and revelation for so many of us," said Teresa Eyring, executive director and CEO, TCG. "Whether through his 'altar'-ego, Jomama Jones, or through the electric playwriting and performance-making chronicled in Love Like Light, his boundless creativity shines through. We're thrilled to work with our TCG Books Partner Publisher, 53rd State Press, to feature him in conversation with Emily Morse, herself a director and artistic leader of great heart and vision."

Daniel Alexander Jones's (he/him) numerous critically-acclaimed plays and performance pieces include Black Light (Public Theater, Greenwich House Theatre); Duat (Soho Rep); An Integrator's Manual (La MaMa, etc. and Fusebox Festival); and Radiate (Soho Rep and National Tour). Jones has recorded five albums of original songs as his alter-ego, Jomama Jones. He is recognized as a key voice in the development of Theatrical Jazz and has made a significant contribution to Black Experimental Theatre and Performance. He is currently developing a??Altar no. 5a??i??, a commission of The Public Theater developed in partnership with New York Live Arts.

Emily Morse (she/her) is the artistic director of New Dramatists, and a theatre artist whose 28-year career encompasses performing, directing, playwriting, dramaturgy, devising, producing, arts administration, curating and artistic consulting at theatres and companies of all sizes, including Philadelphia Theatre Company, People's Light, Actors Theatre of Louisville, New York Theatre Workshop, LMDA, Ping Chong and Co, NADA, LEMA productions, HERE, the Wilma, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, JAW/West Festival - Portland Center Stage, Creative Time, Ripe Time, Cincinnati Playhouse, Culture Project/Women Center Stage, PlayPenn, 13P, Drama League New Directors/New Works, Links Hall, and Re/Union Company at LaMaMa. A veteran theatre artist with a specialty in process-oriented new work, Emily is a Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab alumna and NYTW Usual Suspect.

About the book: Collecting Daniel Alexander Jones's plays and performance texts Bel Canto, Black Light, Blood:Shock:Boogie, clayangels, Duat, Phoenix Fabrik, and The Book of Daniel, this volume offers a panoramic view of Jones's shifting, glimmering, transformational body of work. Each play a provocation to the possibility of a more just world with love as civic practice at its center, Jones's writing moves with lithe and associative grace through histories personal, political, cosmological, and sublime. A reunion not only of Jones's revolutionary work in the course of twenty-five years in the avant-gardes of New York, Austin, and Minneapolis, among others, Love Like Light is also a reunion of collaborators and friends, featuring essays by Vicky Boone, Jacques Colimon, Eisa Davis, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, korde arrington tuttle, Aaron Landsman, Deborah Paredez, and Shay Youngblood and an interview with Faye Price.

53rd State Press publishes lucid, challenging, and lively new writing for performance. They favor work that expands notions of the theatrical in performance and in print, and they are committed to making more widely available the work of emerging and experimental artists. Their catalog includes new plays as well as scores and notations for interdisciplinary performance, graphic adaptations, and essays on theater and dance.

TCG Books is the largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature in North America, with 18 winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama on its book list. The book program commits to the life-long career of its playwrights, keeping all of their plays in print. TCG Books' authors include: Annie Baker, Nilo Cruz, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Larissa Fasthorse, Athol Fugard, Quiara Alegría Hudes, David Henry Hwang, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Tony Kushner, Young Jean Lee, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, Heidi Schreck, Stephen Sondheim, Paula Vogel, and August Wilson.