25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival

Kelley Nicole Girod: While serving as the Executive Director of The Fire This Time, Girod has also held the positions of Producing Director at the historic Black theater, The Billie Holiday, in Brooklyn, NY, as well as Programming Associate at New York City's The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture. Kelley is also an award winning playwright whose work has been featured in NYC, she was Atlantic Theater’s 2019 Launch Commission Playwright, and Sheen Center’s 2020 fellow, and is recent nominee of the prestigious Paul Robeson Award. Through The Fire This Time, her work at the above institutions, and her work as a playwright in the community, she has built relationships with the wider theater community and TFTT has had collaborations with The Apollo, North Carolina Black Rep, Center Theater Group, Hibernian Hall (Boston), Crossroads Theater (NJ), National Black Theater, and Classical Theater of Harlem to name a few.

- About the Festival and List of all playwrights from the past 11 Season
- Foreword “The Privilege of Identity and Why I Founded The Fire This Time Festival

Play Sections

1.Section 1: Vanna White, Brook Shields, and Beyonce: Beauty Standards and Self Acceptance in Black America
Featuring Katori Hall’s Beyonce Effect, Derek Lee McPhatter’s Citizen Jane, Antoinette Nwandu’s Vanna White Has Got To Die, and Roger Q. Mason’s Hard Palate

2. Section 2: The Cost of Education: Confronting the Effects of Racial Disparity in America’s Education System
Featuring Dominique Morisseau’s Third Grade; Fransica Da Silviera’s scholarship babies; and Tracey Conyer Lee’s Poor Posturing

3. Section 3: The Shots Heard Round The World: Policing Black Bodies in White America
Featuring C.A. Johnson's The Fucking World and Everything in It; William Watkins' BLACK WHITE & BLUE; Jordan E. Cooper's Ain't No Mo; and Natyna Bean's Assumed Positions

4. Section 4: Birth: Contemplating the next generation in a complicated system
Featuring Dennis A. Allen II’s Untainted Wombs, and Deneen Reynolds-Knott’s Antepartum

5. Section 5: Maintaining Roots: Addressing Gentrification in Historically Black Neighborhoods
Featuring Bernard Tarver's Just Another Saturday in the Park and Cyrus Aaron's Panopticon


6. Section 6: The Black Family: How We Thrive in the Face of Oppression
Featuring Camille Darby’s Exodus; Marcus Gardley’s The Sporting Life of Icarus Jones; Charly Evon Simpson’s The House; Kendra Augustin’s Sisterhood in the Time of the Apocalypse; and Samantha Godfrey’s C.O.G.s.

7. Section 7: Black Love: Why We Hope
Featuring Jonathan Payne’s The Weatherin’; Tyler English-Beckwith’s Maya and Rivers; Fredrica Bailey’s Love and Happiness; Angelica Cheri’s Slow Gin Fits; and Josh Wilder’s Gravity,


The Fire This Time Creative Team