No Dream Deferred NOLA Announces Inaugural New Play Festival Featuring The Works Of Southern Black Playwrights

On Tuesday, June 14th, 2022, No Dream Deferred NOLA announced its inaugural new play festival, WE WILL DREAM: New Works Festival supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The festival will run from March 19, 2023-June 19, 2023. Performances will take place at the newly announced Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice, located at 2541 Bayou Road in the historic Bayou Road Corridor.

The WE WILL DREAM: New Works Festival will be a biennial event that locates the Bayou Road corridor of New Orleans as the "national meeting place" for Black playwrights originating/working in the American South to engage with compelling, artistic, intellectual, and cultural dialogue and community exploration. The festival's goal is to serve as a bulwark of support for the professional and artistic development of Black playwrights.

The festival will premiere full productions of 3 new plays written by Black playwrights with a strong, ongoing connection to the American South. It will also premiere a new work by a partner theatre company located within the African diaspora. Additionally, the festival will host other public convenings as well as a full schedule of community performances by local New Orleans artists. To increase access to these new works, local New Orleanians will be able to attend performances at no cost. In its inaugural year, the festival will explore the concept of "inheritance."

Producing Artistic Director, Lauren E. Turner, says this about the new festival,"WE WILL DREAM offers an opportunity to invest deeply in crafting an intentional space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color across the American South to transcend barriers and collectively dream about who we are, what we want and where we will go, together. Our goal is to create an impactful, financially beneficial opportunity for global majority theatre artists that contributes to a full and satisfying career path, right here in the deep south. This festival supports the thought that your dreams are attainable, right where you are. We are so grateful to the Mellon Foundation, for seeing the value in this type of support, and for understanding how this work supports public discourse and strengthens communities."

New play submissions are currently being accepted. To submit please visit:
https://neworleans.culturalyst.com/#!/opportunity/view?opportunity_id=-N4SvIIav6-vSMI8LRnY.

To learn more about the festival and No Dream Deferred, please visit: www.nodreamdeferrednola.com.