France-Luce Benson, Adrienne Dawes, Deneen Reynolds-Knott And Mars Wolfe To Develop Work In The Fire This Time Festival New Works Lab

FRIGID New York has announced the four playwrights who will be developing work in the 6th cycle of The Fire This Time Festival New Works Lab program: France-Luce Benson, Adrienne Dawes, Deneen Reynolds-Knott and Mars Wolfe. The 6th cycle began in October 2023 and the playwrights will meet monthly to share their work through May 2024. 

In 2015 The Fire This Time established The Fire This Time Writers’ Group with the mission to provide TFTT alumni and writers from the TFTT community the opportunity to develop new work in a safe, nurturing and supportive environment. The initiative was renamed the New Works Lab in 2017. From its inception to the present, the lab has been co-directed by educator and playwright Cynthia Grace Robinson (“Freedom Summer” “What If?” “Dancing on Eggshells”) and A.J. Muhammad, a producer with TFTT. Funding for the 6th cycle of the New Works Lab was made possible by generous support from The Black Seed Fund. 

Past New Works Lab members include James Anthony Tyler, Jay Mazyck, Kendra Augustin, Kim Brockington, Antu Yacob, William Watkins, Shamar S. White, Maia Matsushita, Shawn Nabors, T.R. Riggins, Tyrell Bennett, Khalil Kain, Liz Morgan, Edgar Chisholm, Christine Jean Chambers, Danielle Davenport and Ngozi Anyanwu. 

France-Luce Benson is a Haitian-American playwright/screenwriter and Assistant Professor at CSU San Marcos. Her plays have had productions at Williamstown

Theatre Festival, The Fire This Time Festival, The Fountain Theatre, Billie Holiday Theatre, New Black Fest, Crossroads Theatre, Juggernaut Theatre, and Ensemble Studio Theatre NYC where she is a company member; and development workshops at Atlantic Theatre Company, The Playwright’s Center, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among others. She was a staff writer on Paramount Plus’ upcoming series “Lawmen: The Bass Reeves Story.” Honors include The Lily’s Lorraine Hansberry Award, Dramatist Guild Fellow, NYSCA’s Individual Artist Award, Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Fellow, Zoetrope’s Grand Prize for original screenplay, and Samuel French OOB Festival Winner. She is also a recipient of Sony’s Teaching Artist Award for Innovative Curriculum. Her plays have been published by DPS, Samuel French, and Routledge. She’s a proud member of the Writer’s Guild.

Adrienne Dawes (she/her/hers) is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and teaching artist originally from Austin, TX. Her plays, including “Am I White,” “Teen Dad,” “Hairy & Sherri,” and “This Bitch: Esta Sangre Quiero,” have been developed/ produced by Salvage Vanguard Theater, New Harmony Project, The Fire This Time Festival, Theatre Lab at FAU, Queen City New Play Initiative, Stages Repertory Theatre, Teatro Milagro, National Black Theatre, and English Theatre Berlin, among others. Adrienne received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and studied sketch and improv at the Second City Training Center in Chicago. Recent honors include: Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Alice Judson Hayes Fellow at Ragdale Foundation, Arkansas Arts Council Individual Fellowship Award, and artist residencies with Colt Coeur, PlySpace, and Crosstown Arts.

Deneen Reynolds-Knott is a playwright living in Brooklyn, New York. She was recently commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre to write her play, “Biting the Hand.” Her outdoor play, “Shoebox Picnic Road Side: Route One,” had its World Premiere at Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Fall 2021. Other plays include: “Babes in Ho-lland” (2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Upcoming 2024 Production at Shotgun Players), “Particularly Meddlesome Ancestors''( 2023 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist, 2022 Ingram New Works Festival at Nashville Rep), “Assuming Positive Intentions” (2021 Clubbed Thumb Reading), “Flashes & Floaters” (2020 Playfest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater and “Antepartum” (2020 Fire This Time Festival’s signature ten-minute play program). She contributed work to 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company’s Telephone Plays, True Colors’ 2022 Next Narrative Monologue Competition and The Billie Holiday Theatre’s 50in50: Shattering the Glass Ceiling. Deneen is a New Georges affiliated artist and was a member of Clubbed Thumb’s 2019-2020 Early-Career Writers’ Group. Deneen participated in SPACE at Ryder Farm’s Family Residency in Summer 2022 and developed projects with Liberation Theatre Company, Project Y, Rising Circle and Frank Silvera Workshop. She received her MFA in film from Columbia University.

Mars Wolfe (they/them) is a genderqueer nomad. They orbit New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, writing, performing and project managing. Mars moonlights as the genderf*ck drag queen 11 o’Clock and their one-person show, Bill, Bill, Billz premiered in Ars Nova’s ANT FEST 2022. Mars has stage managed the musical Kimberly Akimbo, MTV’s Video Music Awards, and Tyra Banks’ ModelLand. The digital salon Mars curated, featuring BIPOC artists during quarantine 2020, is available to stream at de-cypher2020.com. Mars was a Sundance Episodic Lab Fellow and they are currently a tall poPpy apprentice, studying with Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori. Mars has previously collaborated with The Fire This Festival on their one act “Wish I Could P. (Pay it no Mind),” celebrating the legacy of Trans-Activist Marsha P. Johnson. Mars aims to amplify the voices of Trans/Gender variant people of color with their work, adjusting the volume and turning the dial from the familiar to the unsung and unconventional. Education: Juilliard and DePaul University.

The Fire This Time Festival was founded in 2009 by playwright and producer Kelley Girod to provide a platform for playwrights of African and African-American descent to write and produce evocative material for diverse audiences. Since the debut of the first 10-minute play program in 2010, presented in collaboration with FRIGID New York, The Fire This Time Festival has has produced and developed the work of more than 80 playwrights including Katori Hall, Dominique Morisseau, Radha Blank, Antoinette Nwandu, Jocelyn Bioh, korde arrington tuttle, Stacey Rose, Aziza Barnes, C.A. Johnson, Kevin R. Free, Charly Evon Simpson, Angelica Cheri, James Anthony Tyler, Jordan Cooper and Nathan Yungerberg.  

The Fire This Time’s first anthology, “25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Rebirth, and Black Theater” edited by Kelley Girod was released by Bloomsbury Publishing in February 2022. www.firethistimefestival.com 

FRIGID New York’s mission is to provide both emerging and established artists the opportunity to create and produce original work of varied content, form, and style, and to amplify their diverse voices. We do this by presenting an array of monthly programming, mainstage productions, an artist residency, and eight annual theater festivals that create an environment of collaboration, resourcefulness, and innovation. Founded in 1998, the aim was and is to form a structure, allowing multiple artists to focus on creating and staging new work and providing affordable rental space to scores of independent artists. Now in our third decade we have produced a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater. www.frigid.nyc

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