Facing Our Truth: Ten Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege

Facing Our Truth: Ten Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege

Facing Our Truth: Ten Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege

Facing Our Truth: Ten Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege

Facing Our Truth: Ten Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege

Overview

In light of the George Zimmerman verdict, The New Black Fest commissioned six very diverse playwrights to write 10-minute plays on the topic of Trayvon Martin, race and/or privilege. Facing Our Truth's purpose is to incite serious discussion in our collective communities around these urgent issues.

The collection, Facing Our Truth: Ten Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilegeis comprised of the following plays:

THE BALLAD OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN text by Dan O’Brien music by Quetzal Flores
A folk opera recreating the ten minutes leading to the murder of Trayvon Martin, The Ballad of George Zimmerman explores the mind of his killer. 

COLORED by Winter Miller
Interactions between passengers on a subway ride escalate dangerously.

DRESSING
by Mona Mansour & Tala Manassah
In Dressing, a short play in three parts, a mother teases her son over his attire just as he gets ready to leave for school. He pushes back playfully; they play this game all the time. Parts two and three follow this mother as she experiences an unimaginable loss, shedding light on the nature of the vulnerability of the physical self.

NIGHT VISION by Dominique Morisseau
Ayanna and Ezra witness a woman getting beaten on the street by a man in a hooded sweatshirt. After they diffuse the situation they return to their apartment to call the police. However, when they discover how their accounts of the attacker differ, both are left questioning the truth of what they saw. 

NO MORE MONSTERS HERE by Marcus Gardley 
No More Monsters Here is a satire about a young white female who visits a psychiatrist and gets diagnosed with "Negro-phobia": a fear of African American people. The psychiatrist tells her that the cure is for her to spend three days literally living in the body of a young African American male who lives in the hood. The end result is a revelation that will make you laugh, shock you and perhaps break your heart! 

SOME OTHER KID by A. Rey Pamatmat
Three young people weigh both the potentially liberating privileges and the potentially deadly consequences of being just some other kid.

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Cautions

  • Caution Intense Adult Intense Adult Themes

Details

  • Genre: Not Applicable
  • Time Period: Contemporary, Present Day, New Millennium/21st Century
  • Cast Attributes: Ensemble cast, Reduced casting (Doubling Possible), Expandable casting, Flexible cast size, Multicultural casting
  • Target Audience: Adult, Teen (Age 14 - 18)

Authors

A. Rey Pamatmat

A. Rey Pamatmat’s plays include Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (Actors Theatre of Louisville), after all the terrible things I do (Milwaukee Rep), House Rules (Ma-Yi), Thunder Above, Deeps Below (Second Generation), A Spare Me (Waterwell), and DEVIANT. His newest play, S ...

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Dan O'Brien

Dan O’Brien is a playwright, poet, and librettist. His play The Body of an American received the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, the PEN Center USA Award for Drama, the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and was shortlist ...

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Dominique Morisseau

Dominique Morisseau is the author of The Detroit Project (A 3-Play Cycle), which includes the following plays: Skeleton Crew (Atlantic Theater Company), Paradise Blue (Signature Theatre), and Detroit ’67 (Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem and NBT). Additional plays ...

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Mona Mansour

Mona Mansour’s play The Way West had its world premiere in spring of 2014 at Steppenwolf, directed by Amy Morton. The play received the 2013 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize from Marin Theatre Company, where it will get its West Coast premiere in April 2015. The play receiv ...
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Winter Miller

Winter Miller is an award-winning playwright and founding member of the Obie-recognized collective 13 Playwrights. She is best known for her drama In Darfur which premiered at The Public Theater, followed by a standing room only performance at their 1800-seat Delacorte Theate ...
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Marcus Gardley

Marcus Gardley is a poet-playwright. He was the 2012 James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. The New Yorker describes Gardley as “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams.” His play The House that Will Not St ...
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Tala Manassah

Tala Jamal Manassah is deputy executive director of the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, the national leader in school-based social and emotional learning programs. Morningside Center works for a society that is just, peaceful, and truly democratic by wo ...
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Quetzal Flores

Quetzal Flores is a Grammy® Award winning East LA Chican@ rock group, now celebrating its 20-year anniversary, Quetzal is the collaborative project of Quetzal Flores (guitar), Martha González (lead vocals, percussion), Tylana Enomoto (violin), Juan Pérez (bass), Peter Jacobso ...
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