Harlem9 Presents The 9th Annual 48 HOURS IN...HARLEM

Off the heels of producing its festival nationally in the Bronx, Detroit, and Winston-Salem, Harlem9 presents the Obie Award-Winning "48Hours in... Harlem".

This event marks the 9th year of Harlem9, the collaborative partnership between 6 producers, bringing together 6 playwrights, 6 directors, and 18 actors. For this year's festival, playwrights will be inspired by 6 works from the late Ntozake Shange into 10-minute plays over the course of one weekend. "48Hours in... Harlem" culminates in a one night only event on Sunday, August 25, 2019. The 7pm performance will take place at a new location, the National Dance Institute (NDI) in Harlem. Participating artists' details are below.

Tickets are available on Brown Paper Tickets. Visit 48hours9years.bpt.me to purchase for $25 in advance online. National Dance Institute in Harlem is located at 217 W. 147th Street between Frederick Douglass Blvd and Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Blvd.

The 6 playwrights are Karen Chilton, C.A. Johnson, Liz Morgan, Aurin Squire, York Walker, Charles White. The 6 directors are Chris Berry, Daniel Bryant, Rhonda Passion Hansome, Miranda Haymon, Taylor Reynolds, and SC2. The 18 actors include Noah Anderson, Vanessa Butler, Angela Christine, Melvin J. Cox, Justin Crowley, Biko Eisen-Martin, Brandon Gill, Trevor Hayes, Ashley N. Hildreth, Margaret Odette, Monique Robinson, Jasmine Rush, Brayden Simpson, Dannie Toussaint, and Valencia Yearwood.

Beginning on Friday, August 23, the 6 playwrights in this year's Harlem festival will be challenged to write a new ten-minute play inspired by 6 works from Ntozake Shange, who passed in 2018. The 6 work inspirations: "A Photograph: Lovers in Motion", "Black & White Two-Dimensional Planes", "boogie woogie landscapes", "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf", "Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo", and "Spell #7".

In the last year, the producers of Harlem9 have done something new for the collective and taken their "48hours in..." to a national audience, commissioning 18 new 10-minute plays across 3 festivals: El Bronx, Detroit and Holy Ground, featuring underrepresented voices in all communities. Their year began with the 3rd "48Hours in...El Bronx" in April of 2019, a collaboration with Pregones / PRTT. In July, the 6 producers collaborated with Detroit Public Theatre on the first of two "48hours in...Detroit" festivals, which was funded by a 2018 Knight Arts Foundation Award, matched by The Downtown Detroit Partnership, and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)'s Michigan Film and Digital Media Office (MFDMO). The collaborative finally closed out the national tour of the festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for the inaugural "48Hours in...Holy Ground" as part of The National Black Theatre Festival in partnership with NC Black Rep.

Since 2011, Harlem9 has commissioned playwrights of color to tell their stories in the annual "48Hours in...Harlem" play festival. For nearly a decade, the producers have continued to highlight and uplift writers, directors, and actors at various points in their careers, including Jocelyn Bioh, Brandon Michael Hall, Dominique Morisseau, Marcel Spears, Tonye Patano and Tonya Pinkins.

For more information, please visit www.harlem9.org.

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