The Billie Holiday Theatre Announces Call For Stories

The Billie Holiday Theatre (BHT) announces its annual global call for stories - 50in50: Letters to Our Sons. For the fourth year, MacArthur "Genius" Dominique Morisseau's curatorial statement calls women from all walks of life to share their stories. A diverse group of 50 stories will be selected to be read by a renowned collective of women actors in Brooklyn, New York followed by the West Coast premiere at the dynamic and newly-created WACO Theater Center in Los Angeles, California. Readings will take place in March 2020.

In the past, stories have been selected by women from around the corner in Bedford Stuyvesant community to around the world in Holland, South Africa, and Canada. This year, Dominique Morisseau asks: "If sons are not just born of our loins, but also born of our collective energies, then what do we want to say to our sons? This legion of men who will grow up in a post #metoo, post #blacklivesmatter, post #timesup era? When we have been the defenders of men whose un-muted music continues to defile and degrade our sacred bodies? When we know these sons are also growing up in a world with our daughters, who do we want them to become? What wish, what lesson, what truth do we want them to know that could turn their course? Create a future of warriors, gentle giants, gracious, kind, loving, life-sustaining men? What do we want them to know about us and about themselves? And if we could create a map for their survival, what would be the route?"

"The Billie presents 50in50 as a platform for agency and empowerment so that women and girls can share their stories from the complex and diverse places that we as Black women exist in every day," said Dr. Indira Etwaroo, Executive Director, BHT. "50in50 has become increasingly meaningful as Black women continue 'to define and seek a world' in the words of Audre Lorde, 'in which we can all flourish'"

- Submission Deadline: Friday, February 14, 2020 at 11:59PM | Submissions at TheBillieHoliday.org

- Selected Writers will be Announced: February 18, 2020

- 50in50: Letters to Our Sons Readings in Brooklyn and LA: March 2020

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