Photos: Inside Roger Q. Mason's NIGHT CITIES At The Not A Moment, But A Movement Festival

On Sunday, June 23 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles, acclaimed Black Filipinx playwright and Kilroys List honoree Roger Q. Mason received an industry reading of Night Cities, a new play about Queer civil rights activist Bayard Rusin. The play was presented as part of the Not a Moment, But a Movement Festival with Center Theatre Group In collaboration with The Fire This Time Festival and Watts Village Theater Company.

A young Bayard Rustin—before Civil Rights Movement fame—must choose between his private desires as a queer black man and his public calling as an agent of social justice and civic change. Set against the vibrant labor movement of the 1930s and 40s, this piece embraces the musicality, dream imagery, and liberation of jazz playwriting to explore one man's quest for complex humanity in a world that limits who we are to how we can be used for the good of others.

The reading was directed by Nancy Keystone and the cast included Christopher Livingston (Julius Caesar at The Public), James Patrick Nelson (Memorial with Pan Asian Rep), Larry Powell (Brokeology with Lincoln Center), and Dennis Renard (Come Get Maggie with Rogue Machine).

Photo credit: Seth Dorcey