Bishop Arts Theatre Center Announces The 2022 First Move Playwrights Festival

Bishop Arts Theatre Center has announced four exciting new plays to be featured in the First Move Playwrights Festival from July 16th - 24th, 2022.

The festival is a culmination of eight months' worth of new play development by the First Move Playwrights Lab cohort of local DFW playwrights. In addition to monthly meetings where members share new work and receive feedback from their Lab peers, members also receive individual dramaturgical support and career guidance.

"This is my first playwrights lab and it has been a dynamic and motivating experience for me to explore and create in a space that fuels the courage to be authentic, while supporting the work of other playwrights. The process has been a tremendous journey of learning and discovery," said DFW Region Dramatists Guild Regional Representative Terrance Brooks Boykin regarding his time spent in the Lab.

The First Move Playwrights Lab was created as a response to the needs of local playwrights to find spaces to develop new plays with other artists in monthly meetings over an eight-month period of time.

Recounting her Lab experience, playwright and director Zoe Kerr said, "I am so proud to be a member of First Move. To sit in a room with like-minded creatives and feel respected and heard as a playwright is a rare experience, but Bishop Arts Theatre Center (and Cain Rodriguez and Franky Gonzalez!) made it feel like the most natural thing in the world. Every arts organization should have a program like this."

Playwright Erin Malone Turner felt similarly, stating, "It has been such a pleasure being part of this cohort led by these theater-makers! Everyone has been so kind and supportive and a real bright spot in this year. I've been challenged in my writing process in the best ways, reconfiguring my voice & style, and honing in on what I want to express to everyone out there."

Echoing the rest of the cohort Aaron Zilbermann said, "I have sincerely enjoyed the process of working with the First Move Playwrights Lab. The creative environment, support, knowledge and resources that have been offered to local playwrights developing our craft has inspired my creativity, demanded my discipline and encouraged me to investigate my work as a playwright on a much deeper level."

About the Plays and the Playwrights

The Secret Keepers by Erin Malone Turner, July 16th, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST

Trudging through their last semester at The Right Path Academy is a group of silly, intense, thoughtful, difficult high school seniors. During their last semester at the run-down boarding school, things get stranger than ever. This Southern gothic/coming-of-age play explores how we are responsible for each other, the messiness of growing up, the price of shouldering burdens alone, & learning how to accept what we've never truly had.

Erin Malone Turner is a New Orleans born, Dallas-based playwright, poet, actor, and middle school English teacher. She graduated from UT Arlington in 2017 with a BA in English and a Creative Writing minor. Her plays have been featured across DFW, including: "GRAY" (Bishop Arts Theatre Co), "how to catch a ghost" (Kitchen Dog Theater), "the way it was/the way it is" (Soul Repertory Theatre), and "i thought you hung the moon" (Luckenbooth Theatre) - the last of which was nominated for a BroadwayWorld Dallas award. Her artistic drive includes telling Black stories within the realm of speculative fiction. She was thrillingly mentored by Audra McDonald for the past year. You can follow her creative endeavors on New Play Exchange and on Instagram @erinmaloneturner. Black lives matter.

El Amor in the Time of Corona by Aaron Zilbermann, July 17th, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST

An undocumented Colombian immigrant navigates love, abuse, exploitation, trauma and family in a new country, a new culture and a new language during the summer of COVID. With the constant threat of deportation looming, she is forced to make uncomfortable decisions and deal with the challenges of raising a teenage daughter in a society whose government labels her basic existence as illegal.

Aaron Zilbermann is a Dallas-based playwright, director, and educator. He is the artistic director for Metamorphosis, a nonprofit that uses art as a tool to battle systemic oppression and create change in Dallas, with whom he has produced and directed Dutchman by LeRoi Jones and A Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward. His plays, Another John, There Will Be Bloods, and Incommunicado have been developed and produced by 13th Street Repertory Company and the Midtown International Theater Festival in NYC as well as Hyde Park Theatre in Austin.

Ursa Major by Zoe Kerr, July 23rd, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST

When his best friend goes missing in a national park under mysterious circumstances, a teenage boy must confront his small town's politics as he pursues the truth of how his best friend went missing and why no one is trying to find him. This play is about complicity, adolescence, and what we owe our communities and ourselves when the absolute worst thing that could happen happens.

Zoe Kerr is a director, playwright, and screenwriter. Zoe has received a Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Forum Award for her movement play Everything Will Be Fine, a Dallas Film Alliance Critics Choice Award for her short film Out of Hand and was a semi-finalist at the Austin Film Festival Stage Play Competition with her magical realism play Heartless Bitch. Most recently, Zoe was named a semi-finalist in the 2022 GrubStreet Emerging Writer Fellowship.

Red Bird Lane by Terrance Brooks Boykin, July 24th, 2022, at 3:00 pm CST

A woman struggles for the survival of her business in an urban neighborhood immersed in change, memories, old friendships, and dreams.

Terrance Brooks Boykin is an American playwright and poet. His plays include Red Bird Lane, Rebirth in the Garden, Wrestling with Untitled, and The Private Life. In addition, as a filmmaker, he earned a screenwriting credit for the children's action-adventure, the Black Cougar. He currently supports playwrights in Dallas/Fort Worth as the Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild.

Tickets are donation-based and can be made at the door or online here. Please leave your name on the donation to ensure your entry.

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