Black Women Playwrights Shine at Third Annual JAG Productions Festival JAGFest3.0!

Maine Anders, Kirya Traber, Tracey Conyer Lee, & Gethsemane Herron-Coward Photo by Drew Shade

For the past two years, JAG Productions has been making waves in the theatre community of White River Junction, Vermont and the ripple effect has made its way to the Big Apple more than a few times. Founder Jarvis Antonio Green and his team have worked religiously to invite Black theatre artists to spend a week in Vermont to further the development of a new play or solo performance. Over the course of the one-week residency, three-five projects receive an intensive workshop, constructive feedback, and a staged reading for the public at Briggs Opera House.

For the third edition of the JAG Productions festival, appropriately titled JAGfest 3.0, presenting new works in African-American theatre, all the playwrights are Black women.

Presented February 8-10, JAGfest 3.0 will include four staged readings of their works, throughout three days, each featuring a post-show conversation with the artists and moderated by Dartmouth scholars.

The JAGfest Dance Party, a celebration of the festival, will take place after the first play on Friday, February 8th, at 9 PM with DJ Sean at Piecemeal Pies in White River Junction, VT. Champagne toast, snacks and free of charge for JAGFest weekend pass ticket holders.

We had the opportunity to meet with each of the playwrights and ask, what does it mean to be a Black Woman playwright in today’s theatre climate? You can find their thought-provoking answers below along with more information about the piece they’ll be presenting at JAGFest3.0, the pioneering festival you’ll be hearing about for years to come.

The Last Day of Black History Month: A Conversation with a Naked Black Southern Lesbian

by Maine Anders & Ayesha Dillabough, & Kia Warren

Directed by Kia Warren & Ayesha Dillabough

Friday, February 8, 7:30 PM

Kia Warren, Maine Anders, & Ayesha Dillabough Photo by Drew Shade

Synopsis: The international “triple threat of burlesque” baptized by Michael Musto as one of ‘NYC’s Creatures of the Night’ in Out Magazine, The “Maine Attraction” Anders (Lady L’Amours Final Bow, Duane Park, Cheek to Cheek: Lady Gaga & Tony Bennett) shares her story of ancestry and artistic resilience with a personal and humorous timeline of our nation’s violent and systematic oppression. Hailing from Decatur, Georgia, Anders’ one-woman master-class on the prominent underbelly of American history, The Last Day of Black History Month… is a multimedia show featuring dance, comedy, music, and poetry unveiling hidden truths while facilitating acceptance, compassion, and unity.

“Beyond the privilege it is to be a playwright and an artist today, I feel that there is a real opportunity and even responsibility to examine and reflect the raw, honest truth, and complexity of what it means to be black and female in a landscape that consciously and subconsciously aims to diminish and even mitigate our responses to this very real experience… and I don’t believe we have the luxury of time to dally… we the creators must do our part to hold space as we foster room for healing both collectively and as individuals.” – Kia Warren

Rabbit Summer by Tracey Conyer Lee

Directed by Christopher Burris

Saturday, February 9, 4:00 PM

Tracey Conyer Lee Photo by Drew Shade

Synopsis: Wilson and Ruby have good jobs, a beautiful home, a child…working on another, while Ruby’s best friend, Claire, has just lost her unarmed Black husband to the quick trigger of a white cop. Wilson idealizes his marriage and ignores the irony of his job as a police officer, smiling through pain Ruby wishes he would share. Tired of feeling helpless and trapped in her Huxtable-like existence, Ruby has a secret plan to fix the American gun problem and push her husband to unpack the legacy of false manhood. As Claire mourns in the comfort of her friends, secrets are unearthed stirring a pot of reality Wilson has never tasted, pitting Black against blue, gun violence against police brutality, manhood against fatherhood and love against need. The trio individually battle to live their truths in a country built on lies while navigating the uniquely American condition of “Being, While Black.”

“Black, female, damn near 50, never married, childless, fiercely choosing to not be what my own incongruous upbringing indicated I should be, abundantly happy, yet unabashedly still figuring it all out, unapologetic and unafraid of what is to be made of my later start in script writing.It’s no secret that representation of my unique perspective wanes in deference to the power of the sexy (read: young, white and male), but I am inspired by the underdog and believe in her place at the table. My age is a career contradiction because my access is as youthful as any BFA candidate, yet I’m mature enough to have fully experienced the evolution of an unprecedented representation dynamic and to have witnessed the myriad stories that fell in the decades-long gaps. It matters that my quarter century acting career began playing roles never written by people who looked like me and has evolved into seeking work written by my friends and peers and writing work for the girls who will never have to experience that same lack. I may not be around long enough to enjoy this side of it for the same tenure I put in without it, but I am grateful and daily cognizant of each day I add to what was, for decades, a representational blight.” – Tracey Conyer Lee

If This Be Sin A New Musical Book by Kirya Traber

Music by Sissi Liu

Directed & Choreographed by Christopher Windom

Saturday, February 9, 7:30 PM

Kirya Traber Photo by Drew Shade

Synopsis: If This Be Sin is a new musical based on the life of the queer Harlem Renaissance entertainer, Gladys Bentley. In 2016 Kirya workshopped the play, Permitted through, the Queerly Fest, the NBT’s Keep Soul Alive reading series, and Submerge at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. The play focused on Bentley’s life at a pivotal moment in the 1940s when she’s lost her prominence and is facing a backlash at the dawn of the MacArthur era. Kirya realized that given grand and spectacular scope of Bentley’s real life, any retelling deserves the spectacle and grandeur of a musical. The new work, If This Be Sin, (whose titled is borrowed from an autobiography Bentley spoke of but likely never wrote) is being developed with a full musical score, and will represent Bentley in her early life as an infamous performer in Harlem, as well as her eventual choice to conform and marry a man in the early 1950’s.

“We’re living in an interesting pop culture moment where Black queer women & femmes are finally receiving some (overdue) acknowledgment for the role we’ve played in shaping culture. But if I’m honest, I don’t trust this moment of praise to endure. It seems like everyone wants to put a Black woman’s name or face on an ad campaign, but I’m still waiting for the textbooks to acknowledge so many women of color who organized and coordinated civil rights movements (long before the 1950’s even). I’m still waiting for the work of Black queer artists throughout history to be exhumed from repression so that we may have greater access to our lineage. In this climate, whether through theatre or in media more broadly, I still see my role as pushing hard for nuance, for specificity, and for truth as I have lived it in my own body. I’m hyper aware that visibility alone will never be enough. I want to take up as much space as I can, and bring as many of my folks as I can along with me for the ride.” – Kirya Traber

Blanks or Sunday Afternoon, After Church by Gethsemane Herron-Coward

Directed by NJ Agwuna

Sunday, February 10, 4:00 PM

Gethsemane Herron-Coward Photo by Drew Shade

Synopsis: Medical student Reese desperately hunts for the romance of her dreams while her “aunties-” Black women through history and media- dissuade, distract and try to save her from love’s violent abandonment- something they all experienced, something they all did not survive. BLANKS interrogates how intimate partner violence, intersectional patriarchy, and neglect affect Black women’s pursuit of romantic and filial love. It asks if love conquers all, what happens when it conquers you?

“Today’s theatre climate is one that’s still marked with insidious, sneaky violence for women of color (see Quiara Algeria Hudes’ experience on the Pulitzer Prize Board) This violence could very well rob us of our humanity, as it so ardently seeks to do.

But, the creativity that comes from living on the margins is unmatched. We, who have not always been seen as women, as being as important as our cherished Black men, we who fight at the intersections of patriarchy and racism,  use this hard-earned creativity to penetrate any notion that our stories-and thus our personhood is lesser than. So, in today’s theatre climate, I feel honored to write amongst the warrior women whose stories have always been undeniable-and that the theatre world is now beginning to realize that.” – Gethsemane Herron-Coward