10-Minute Play Festival


The African American experience is not represented solely by one voice or one style. For the third year in a row Horse Trade Theater Group will present The Fire This Time Festival, providing a platform for talented early-career playwrights of African and African-American descent to explore new voices, styles, and challenging new directions for 21st century performing arts in order to move beyond common misconceptions of what's possible in black theater. The festival's core production is a short play festival, presenting new work by featured playwrights. Other festival programming includes panel discussions, staged readings, and concert events.
The Talk
Written by France-Luce Benson
Directed by Jamie Robinson
Manu's little girl is all grown-up. Now it's her turn. But there's just one question: How does one ”rabbit”?

Four
Written by Jocelyn Bioh
Directed by Nicole Watson
It's a typical Friday night at Mansion Night Club: Sweet Thing is late, Saffronia is full of attitude, Peaches is preparing to perform and Aunt Sarah is keeping folks in line... as usual. Inspired by a Nina Simone song (Four Women) Four imagines a world in which all of these women co-exist (and have plenty to say about it).

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: Dream One
Written by Kevin R. Free
Directed by Christopher Burris
An artist struggles with his present as he dreams of his future. This dream is the first scene of Kevin R. Free’s full-length play, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.

Little Louise
Written by Patricia Ione Lloyd
Directed by Donya K. Washington
The Madame of a whorehouse has tea with her inner child, while listening to the brand new Billie Holiday record. The games that little girls play are especially dangerous for grown black women. Little Louise, is the story of a biracial woman in the 1930’s, who understands the law of supply and demand in the business of love.

The Pitch
Written by Zoey Martinson
Directed by Brandon Gardner
The Pitch takes a comedic look at two young black writers trying to sell a modern Black movie to studio executives. See how far they are willing go and how much they are willing to sacrifice to get their movie made.

Vanna White Must Die
Written by Antoinette Nwandu
Directed by Dan Rogers
With a pie in the oven and her boyfriend’s disapproving Mother in the next room, wallflower Seena needs to make a hit. Problem is, her best friend turned arch nemesis Vanna White has other plans. With wit and humor, Vanna White Must Die answers the question, what's a girl gotta do to keep her love alive?

DIG
Written by Jerome Parker
Directed by LA Williams
Haunted by a case, a homicide detective blurs the lines between past, present, home and work in this gritty, street drama.