"bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet."
--Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls ,
Acclaimed playwright Dominique Morriseau has teamed up with RestorationART, Billie Holiday Theatre and Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop to put out a call for 50 Black women and girls from all walks of life to submit a short work (one page) for "Writing Ourselves Into Existence."
[perfectpullquote align="right" cite="" link="" color="" class="" size=""]"We are telling the stories that represent us with balance and complexity and illuminate our side of the human experience."[/perfectpullquote]
Selected works will be read by an esteemed group of women actors at a special event in the soon-to-open historic Billie Holiday Theatre this spring 2017.
"We are in a global movement of Black Lives mattering. We are also in a movement of #sayhername," says Morriseau. "So how do we as storytellers contribute to a narrative that supports Black women's rights to live and exist without exploitation and terror and violation of their human rights?
"As Black Women writers, we fulfill a unique and un-duplicated role in theatre. We are telling the stories that represent us with balance and complexity and illuminate our side of the human experience.
"It is urgent and necessary. And it is our time. More Black women playwrights are being produced today than ever before. Women are starting to be produced, though still sparsely, on Broadway more frequently," says Morriseau.
"We are in a moment or a movement or both."
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE: FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2017, 5:00pm ET | SUBMIT WORK HERE
