This free festival of staged readings and workshops, with opportunities for expanded conversations around the works, provides a preview of new plays in development with the first cohort of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) playwrights in the Ford’s Theatre Legacy Commissions initiative.
Seema Sueko (Silent Sky) will direct Pearl Cleage’s meditation on the life and impact of Maynard Jackson, Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard. Dominic Taylor’s exploration of pioneer Black biologists Dr. Ernest Everett Just and Dr. Roger Arliner Young, Young and Just, will be directed by Donald Douglass. Thomas F. DeFrantz will direct Blackbox, Rickerby Hinds’s magical hip hop retelling of abolitionist Henry Box Brown’s escape to freedom. Individual reading dates are below:
Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard by Pearl Cleage
Thursday, February 2, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, February 4, at 7:30 p.m.
Directed by Seema Sueko
Young and Just by Dominic Taylor
Friday, February 3, at 7:30 p.m.
Directed by Donald Douglass
Blackbox by Rickerby Hinds
Saturday, February 4, at 2:30 p.m.
Directed by Thomas F. DeFrantz
The Legacy Commissions process includes first readings, developmental workshops, and world-premiere productions in the next decade. These commissions seek to broaden the American theater canon by fostering and developing playwrights, incubating stories about social justice and racial history, and exploring the varied experiences of underrepresented characters and lesser-known historical figures and their contributions to American life.