New Work In Development

Our 2010 cadre of citizen theatre playwrights are:

Azure D. Osborne-Lee
Jerome A. Parker
Steve Harper

As resident playwrights, all are charged with writing a new citizen theatre work featuring a black queer protagonist.

Azure D. Osborne-Lee will continue her work with Crooked Parts, a beautiful drama and a fresh take on the colossal circumstance of a black girl coming into her own. Crooked Parts was first birthed in Freedom Train Productions' community workshop. Jerome A. Parker brings us Origins of Us, a cautionary tale about the things we lose, find and pass on in the universe. And finally Black/Out Stories is Steve Harper's documentary theater piece in development that breaks the paradigm of black queer characters negotiating a straight world and instead brings a chorus of black queer voices, front and center.

The playwright residency is an anchor program. There are many companies in New York City concerned with new play development -- Freedom Train Productions is the only one that centers such work around black queer-inspired citizen theatre. Producing artists and guest artists lead the workshops, where artists mine, discover, and develop their new work. Next we organize Offstage Forums, discussions open to the public that dramaturgically connect the onstage struggle with its offstage applications. Finally, Spring Fire! and Fire! New Play Festival are the community and performance venues where we share their work with you, our audience community.

This creative work and the work of their collaborators are informed in part by their own approaches and tenets that Freedom Train Productions holds dear: re-memory, stage democratics, and canaries rule.

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