Where You Want To Be! 5th Annual The New Black Fest at The Lark

The New Black Fest at The Lark is here! The 5th annual theatre festival founded by J. Holtham, Jocelyn Prince, & Keith Josef Adkins will take place April 9th – 13th, 2018. The New Black Fest is a gathering of artists, thinkers, activists, and audiences who are dedicated to stretching, interrogating and uplifting the Black aesthetic. 

The week of events will take place at The Lark, a theater organization that has partnered with The New Black Fest since 2015.

“The Lark is proud to serve as a partner to The New Black Fest in its mission to celebrate insurgent voices within the diverse African diaspora through theater, music, and discussion” 

“…a gathering of artists, thinkers, activists, and audiences who are dedicated to stretching, interrogating and uplifting the Black aesthetic.”

The kick-off event is sure to be one you’ll want to attend. Black Love, Black Space, and Solidarity, a panel discussion you can not afford to miss with a dynamic line-up that includes Keith Beauchamp (filmmaker, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till), C.A. Johnson (playwright), Dominique Morisseau (playwright, TV writer), Quentin Walcott (anti-violence activist, educator, facilitator). The panel will be moderated by The New Black Fest founder and artistic director, Keith Josef Adkins. You’ll also have a chance to witness readings of plays by France-Luce Benson, Donja R. Love, Jonathan Payne, and Liza Jessie Peterson. Check out the deets and RSVP below! Visit The New Black Fest for more info!

April 9, 2018 at 7pm
Kick-Off Panel: Black Love, Black Space, and Solidarity

Moderated by Keith Josef Adkins, and featuring Keith A. Beauchamp, C.A. Johnson, Dominique Morisseau, and Quentin Walcott.

April 10, 2018 at 7pm
SISTERGURLS AND THE SQUIRREL
by Liza Jessie Peterson

Kitty, the sister of Karmica SutraQuita Jones (of Peterson’s Chiron Homegurl Healer Howls) runs an erotic-product business out of her home. A sales-depot of sorts. Several women gather regularly to sell the products and host sex-toy parties around town. But when a squirrel jumps into an open window, chaos ensues, a family secret is revealed, and old wounds come to the surface to be healed.

April 11, 2018 at 7pm
SOFT
by Donja R. Love

Slammed against a poetic backdrop of Urban America, Mr. Isaiah, a recent hire at a disciplinary boarding high school, is ready to make a difference in the lives of his six male students. When one of his boys commits suicide, he is plagued with the questions: Where do Black and Brown boys go when they die? And what makes someone’s struggle so unbearable that they’d take their own life? While seeking answers to this question, he sees the sorrows that each of his boys dances with – and is reminded of his own.

April 12, 2018 at 7pm
DEUX FEMMES ON THE EDGE DE LA REVOLUTION
by France-Luce Benson

A pig is sacrificed, a goddess seduces a young bride, and enslaved and self-liberated Africans on the island of San Domingue rise up to end slavery and destroy colonialism. Deux Femmes on the Edge de la Revolution tells the story of the Haitian Revolution from the perspective of two women – an enslaved healer of African nobility, and a French woman sold into marriage. The two form an unlikely alliance on the battlefields of San Domingue, and like the revolution, their journeys will forever change the course of history.

April 13, 2018 at 7pm
BROTHER RABBIT
by Jonathan Payne

An Easter Play with a false rabbit and a dead Christ, where the scattered tribes of the inner city are alone against the horrors of a terrible plague. Brother Rabbit questions the influence of the church in the Black Community. An institution once so rooted in the upward mobility of a people, may have tragically fallen out of the prestige it once had so long ago.

The New Black Fest is supported in part by a special grant from the Ford Foundation.

Additional support provided through grants to The Lark from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.