Abingdon Theatre Company Reveals Lineup for RAISE THE PAGE, UPLIFT THE WORD

Abingdon Theatre Company has revealed the lineup for Raise the Page, Uplift the Word: A BIPOC Festival of Short Plays in collaboration with AMT Theater, taking place on February 15 at 7PM and February 16 at 3PM, 2025 at AMT Theater.

After receiving a record-breaking number of submissions, this year’s festival playwrights are Cori Diaz, Caitlin Frazier, Maximillian Gill, Gloria Majule, and Michael Mobley. Directors and cast members to be announced at a later date. 

Raise the Page, Uplift the Word: A BIPOC Festival of Short Plays, in partnership with AMT Theater, will be held in person for the first time in the festival's five-year history. The festival spotlights stories written by BIPOC playwrights, with a mission to continue creating opportunities for all voices to be heard. In efforts to make theatre more accessible, tickets to the festival will be free to the public, now available at www.abingdontheatre.org/fsp-2025. 

The schedule for Raise the Page, Uplift the Word: A BIPOC Festival of Short Plays will be as follows: 
Day 1: February 15, 2025 at 7PM will feature Uncut by Gloria Majule and Re: Writing by Caitlin Frazier. 
Day 2: February 16, 2025 at 3PM will feature Flame White by Maximillian Gill, What I Owe Myself by Michael Mobley, and Mouthwater Lozenges by Cori Diaz. 

Producing Artistic Director Chad Austin said, “We are elated to support these five talented playwrights and present their pieces at the festival in February. There is no better way to continue ‘our bravest season yet’ than to support and amplify emerging playwrights and their courageous work.’” 

AMT Theater shared, “At AMT, we strive to develop new plays and collaborate with amazing artists. The work that Abingdon Theatre Company is currently doing is fundamentally so important and so necessary; we are thrilled to be a part of this festival. We hope you enjoy being a part of this as much as we do.”

Cori Diaz

is a playwright finishing up her BFA at NYU Tisch in Dramatic Writing. Most recently, she has had her plays workshopped at The Tank’s LimeFest, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center’s Rough Draft Festival, The Workshop Theater’s Winter Playwriting Intensive, and was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Writers Retreat. She has also been a finalist in Hartford Stage’s Write On!, a selected candidate in Middlebury College’s Young Writers’ Conference at Breadloaf Campus, and a Selected Playwright at the Eugene O’ Neill Theater Center’s Young Playwrights Festival. She has also done training for improv, sketch, and stand-up with The Onion, People’s Improv Theater, John Crane Sketch, The Groundlings, and Second City Chicago. For the past two years, Cori has worked as a Managing Actor-Educator for the nonprofit Speak About It!, a theater company that teaches boundaries and consent education to college students.

Caitlin Frazier

is a writer, actor, and recent graduate of Georgetown University (2023) with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Her writing journey began in her childhood bedroom with short fiction and has since branched out to include plays and longer fiction. At Georgetown, she was awarded second prize for the Annabelle Bonner Medal for short fiction (Department of English) and second place for the Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival (Mask & Bauble Dramatic Society). She was a member of the Barbara Walton Playwright’s Arena 2023 cohort, a writers’ group stewarded by Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Her short play, Re: Writing, has been produced at the Capital Fringe Festival (July 2024) and at Georgetown University (Feb 2024). Some of her poetry and prose can be found in Bossier Magazine and the Same Faces Collective.

Maximillian Gill

was born in India and received his master’s in creative writing in California. His work has been staged by a number of companies and festivals in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia. His plays include Stay Up and Keep Rolling (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist, Premiere Stages semi-finalist), Machines Eat People (Seven Devils Playwrights Conference semi-finalist), Blank Slate (Bay Area Playwrights Festival semi-finalist), and American Divide (Kitchen Dog finalist, Creede Repertory finalist, Landing Theatre Company semi-finalist). A short film based on his monologue recently showed at the Tasveer South Asian Film Festival. He is a member of the New Ambassadors Theatre Company and the American Renaissance Theatre Company in New York City. Much of his work can be read on New Play Exchange. 

Gloria Majule

is a storyteller born and raised in Dodoma, Tanzania. She seeks to tell stories that bring multiple black voices together from across the world, and are accessible to black audiences no matter where they are. She writes for and about Africans and the African diaspora. Gloria has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and commissions by Audible and Atlantic Theater Company. Her canon includes My Father Was Shot in the Back of the Head (Finalist: Relentless Award, O’Neill, Seven Devils, Orchard Project), Culture Shock (Winner: Leah Ryan Prize, Finalist: O’Neill, Alliance/Kendeda, BAPF), Uhuru (Finalist: Blue Ink Award, Premiere Stages, BAPF), and Fifteen Hundred (Finalist: Seven Devils). Gloria is a five time nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her work has recently been developed at ACT - A Contemporary Theatre, the Alley Theatre, the Black and Latino Playwrights Celebration, Vassar’s Powerhouse Theater, the New Harmony Project, Seattle Public Theater and The New Group. She was a guest speaker for the Courageous Art Panel at Starbucks, and the President's Tea at Vassar College. Gloria graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a BA in Performing & Media Arts and Spanish, and was the first African woman to receive an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama. 

Michael Mobley

writes about the intimate and private lives of Black Americans throughout America’s past, present, and future. Sometimes using different genres to tell these stories. Writing about the inner lives of Black Americans allows him to shatter stereotypes and reveal a part of America that has been historically ignored and cast aside. His full-length play, Monsters, had a reading/workshop at Quick Silver Theater Company and Prologue Theatre’s Foreword New Works Series. It placed 2nd in the Echo Theater Company’s New Play Competition and was a Featured Finalist for The Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition. It was also a Finalist for the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and The Playwrights Realm’s Scratchpad Series. His full-length, Feel Alive, was developed at Echo Theater Company and was a Semifinalist for the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference. He was also a Finalist for the Greenhouse Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm and the Many Voices Fellowship at the Playwrights’ Center. His work has been supported by the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Echo Theater Company (National Young Playwrights in Residence Program 21-22). He is currently a Third-Year M.F.A. Playwriting candidate at the University of Texas, at Austin.

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