-a deep breath, in receiving the honor of a Kennedy Center Local Theatre Residency..! / October 2023
I’m excited and incredibly honored to be able to share the news that I’ve been awarded a Kennedy Center Local Theater Residency!
The Residency will support a workshop of my play, By Me You’ll Never Know, a mosaic of perspectives, memory, and music, in a black family whose dynamics are shaped by the ‘generational undiscussed’ as a continuing weight of legacy.
The play’s central challenging scenes, in scope of caregiving, codes of color, and rigors of class, will be fodder for constructing conversations of how topics of drama raise forgotten resonances; of challenge, in particular in this work, for audiences of diversity; in which case, how do we -as creatives, and arts entities- move beyond a standard ‘immediacy of inquiry’, to support more thoughtful opportunities of extended engagement that would allow an audience space (perhaps alternate to the theatre) and time (of hours, or days), in effort of care and support of their own processing needs of reflection.
With the Kennedy Center honor of this Residency, the play presents its components as fodder and thread of their Social Impact programming, which is one of the first initiatives of its kind at a performing arts institution. The Residency will take place in January 2024, and will culminate in presentation of the play.
I’ll be unfurling the journey, and presentation details, in the weeks to come!
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The Local Theatre Residency is a curated developmental residency program for local DMV theater companies and playwrights, hosted at the Kennedy Center’s REACH.
Launched in 2019, under the leadership of Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter and Vice President of Social Impact and Artistic Director of Cultural Strategy Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Social Impact is a steadfast commitment by the Kennedy Center, rooted in the belief that the arts possess a unique potency to shape communities, ignite joy, incite action, and fuel meaningful change within society.
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