FRIGID New York presents The Fire This Time Festival Reading Series

FRIGID New York will present The Fire This Time Festival Reading Series on Sunday, September 3 at 7pm, Monday, September 11 at 7pm, and Sunday, September 17 at 7pm at The Kraine Theater (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003). Tickets ($10) are available for advance purchase at www.frigid.nyc. 

This year The Fire This Time Festival reading series will feature staged readings of full-length plays by playwrights Agyeiwaa Asante, Phillip Christian Smith, and Marcus Scott. 

The readings are part of a two year program The Fire This This Time Festival provides for playwrights from the African diaspora. During their first year, the ten-minute plays of a cohort of Black playwrights are selected to be presented and fully produced in the annual The Fire This Time Festival Ten-Minute Play Program. For their second year, the playwrights are invited back to present a one-night only developmental staged reading in front of an audience. Many of the plays that are first seen as staged readings at The Fire This Time Festival – including Covenant by York Walker which will receive its World Premiere in October 2023 with Roundabout Theatre Company – go on to receive further development and are then produced by regional and Off-Broadway theaters. Asante, Smith and Scott all had ten-minute plays that were presented in the 13th annual The Fire This Time Festival 10-Minute Play Program in July 2022.  

The Half-Sibling Play 

Written by Agyeiwaa Asante 

Sunday, September 3 at 7pm

Growing up in separate households, Kweku and Amoaa have never been the closest of siblings. The death of their father leads them back home to Ghana, providing them an opportunity to come together as a family to put their father and their complicated relationship with him to rest. But when surprising news shakes their delicate foundation, will there be anything left between them once the storm clears? An unfinished story of birthright and generational daddy issues.

Vinyl Vanguard

Written by Marcus Scott

Monday, September 11 at 7pm

When his father goes on a world tour, Heron Gregory is forced to leave Upstate New York and relocate to St. Simons Island to stay with his extended family and finish his education. Also staying with his family is Babatunde, a studious Nigerian foreign exchange student still getting accustomed to the way of life in their secluded town. Polar opposites, the pair of outsider teenage boys form a close friendship and start a rock band. Yet as their bond tightens and the pangs of first love blossom and blister, their uniquely complex cultural differences give way to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Vinyl Vanguard is a Southern Gothic coming-of-age romantic drama about making a home, creating a chosen family, of course, rock 'n roll.

Minding Miss Mae Mae

Written by Phillip Christian Smith

Sunday, September 17 at 7pm

Barbara, mid 50’s, is Miss Mae Mae’s (also mid 50’s) home health aide. When Barbara’s son Jordan, the star of a network procedural, comes home ravaged from Crystal Meth, the women form their own unconventional rehab to detox him, so he can be ready for a new season of the show. Barbara believes in tough love; Miss Mae Mae who is paraplegic, and a pot smoker, believes in The Lord.

The OBIE Award winning The Fire This Time Festival was founded in 2009 by Kelley Girod to provide a platform for playwrights of African and African-American descent to write and produce evocative material for diverse audiences. Since the debut of the first 10-minute play program in 2010, presented in collaboration with FRIGID New York, The Fire This Time Festival has produced and developed the work of over 100 playwrights including Katori Hall, Dominique Morisseau, Radha Blank, Antoinette Nwandu, Jocelyn Bioh, Marcus Gardley, korde arrington tuttle, Stacey Rose, Aziza Barnes, C.A. Johnson, Kevin R. Free, Roger Q. Mason, Charly Evon Simpson, Angelica Cheri, James Anthony Tyler, Jordan E. Cooper and Nathan Yungerberg. In 2022 Bloomsbury books released the anthology “25 Plays From The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth and Black Theater” which includes 25 ten-minute plays that were produced by The Fire This Festival over the past 11 seasons. The PBS performing arts platform ALL ARTS captured the 13th annual The Fire This Time Festival Ten-Minute Plays and the plays will be available for streaming this fall on ALL ARTS website and app and broadcast on the ALL ARTS network. www.firethistimefestival.com

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