New Work In Development: Steve Harper's BLACK/OUT STORIES
SHARE YOUR DANGEROUS BLACK QUEER COMING OUT STORY
2010 Resident Playwright Steve Harper WANTS YOU!
“BLACK/OUT STORIES is a play based on interviews with black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people about coming out. The piece combines the documentary theatre style with traditional narrative scenes that map the journey THE WRITER undertakes in the process of the interviews,” says Steve Harper, a 2010 Resident Playwright at Freedom Train Productions. BLACK/OUT STORIES is his 2010 resident project.
“ALL interviews get recorded and transcribed - names of interviewees are changed - and the interviews will be performed by actors in the final piece. This is unlike any play I've ever worked on and has a visceral immediacy and an experimental edge that I believe will create a transformative theatrical experience. I'm eager to interview people about their most unusual, challenging, controversial and dangerous coming out stories - the ones that break the mold of the traditional coming out narrative.”
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WIN AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF DOES YOUR MAMA KNOW?
The first five to complete their interview win a copy of DOES YOUR MAMA KNOW? (RedBone Press), the classic collection of black lesbian coming out stories, edited by Lisa C. Moore.
Schedule your interview with Steve today by emailing him at blackoutstories@me.com.
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STEVE HARPER'S BIOGRAPHY
His plays include Urban Rabbit Chronicles (nominated for the Weissberger award), The Truth About Magic (a musical), The Escape Artist's Children, almost not quite just about, The Laundry Channel (Juilliard workshop), and Wheelchair Pornography (Spectral Sisters Productions). Short pieces: Things are (Mostly) Crazy, This is Now (American Airlines Theatre - 24 Hour Plays), First Encounter (Falcon Theatre / L.A. - NBC diversity showcase), Actual Cost (Juilliard /100th Anniversary – published by The Kenyon Review Online), Iggie Imagines Marriage (John Houseman Studio/Dreamcatcher Rep.), and Abstract Purple (Baltimore Playwrights Festival). Readings and workshops: New York Stage & Film, Summer Play Festival/Naked Angels, New York Theatre Workshop, Tribeca Theatre Festival, New Professional Theatre, Red Harlem Readers, Jean Cocteau Rep, The Schomberg Center, Montevallo Literary Festival, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, The Round House Theatre, and The Playwrights Forum. Steve is a graduate of Yale, The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard and the playwriting program at Juilliard. Awards include the Artistic Achievement Award from the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, the Millennium Telly Award, the Le Compte du Nouy prize at Juilliard (two-time recipient), two Yaddo fellowships: the Skidmore Residency for Artists of Color (2006), and another in 2008, a MacDowell Colony National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (2007) and the New Professional Theatre’s Writer Festival Grant (2009). When he’s not writing Steve teaches playwriting privately to classes and individuals and works as a creativity coach. He is currently at work on several projects. http://www.harpercreates.com.
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SELECTED PLAYS BY STEVE
URBAN RABBIT CHRONICLES
When Ted watches his wife Karen write a brilliant novel in three days, he becomes convinced that she’s possessed by the spirit of a mysterious rabbit statue. Karen claims Ted is delusional, but Ted fights to enlist his assistant and a Catholic priest in the battle to save his marriage and reclaim the soul of his wife.
THE ESCAPE ARTISTS CHILDREN
When Grayson, an unemployed black lesbian attorney, struggles against an overwhelming depression due to the death of her father, and the fact that her brother is in a coma, she decides to secretly pursue her ex Sheri (who is now married) in the hopes of getting a kiss she believes will magically make things right.
THE LAUNDRY CHANNEL
When Pool, a black TV producer living with his white partner, Clay, stumbles onto a bizarre cable channel, hosted by The Laundress, a blindfolded white woman in 50’s style clothing, spouting random laundry hints - he's freaked out by the fact that no one else can see her.
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