Frank Silvera News

Broadway Black, the multimedia organization highlighting the achievements of Black theatre artists, will present the inaugural Antonyo Awards, a celebration of the Black Broadway and Off-Broadway community.

The AUDELCO and Obie Award-winning Billie Holiday Theatre announced today cast details for a special edition of its breakout 50in50 monologue showcase series - 50in50: Love in the Time of Corona - with title inspiration from the classic novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Nobel prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez.

Playwrights Foundation, the West Coast's premiere launchpad for exceptional plays and playwrights announces the lineup for the 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

The Billie Holiday Theatre will present the third reading under its new #StayAtHome Reading Series with a special reading of James's Sheldon's Reparations, the critically acclaimed play which had its world premiere at The Billie last November.

The AUDELCO and Obie-Award-winning Billie Holiday Theatre will present a special virtual edition of its popular 50in50 monologue showcase series with the highly anticipated 50in50:Letters to Our Sons as part of its new #StayAtHome Reading Series, an innovative online play reading series.

In 1876, New Haven resident Edward Alexander Bouchet became the first African American to earn a doctorate degree in the United States. On Tuesday, February 18, 2020, at 5:30 p.m., playwright Calvin Alexander Ramsey will visit the New Haven Museum to share Bouchet's little-known story and emphasize the steadfast support of his parents and members of the New Haven community along the way. Admission is free.

Full casting has been announced for Chicken and Biscuits at Queens Theatre! 

The year may be winding down, but Queens Theatre is just getting started with a trio of Queens debuts, two Family Series shows based on beloved children's books and the launch production of a family comedy that was a hit with our Reading Series audiences.

The year may be winding down, but Queens Theatre is just getting started with a trio of Queens debuts, two Family Series shows based on beloved children's books and the launch production of a family comedy that was a hit with our Reading Series audiences.

In Chicken and Biscuits, Baneatta and Beverly attempt to put their sisterly differences aside to bury their father, Bernard. All is well at the funeral until it's revealed that Bernard had not just two daughters, but three. Wig pins loosen, as truths emerge, leaving this African-American family to confront their skeletons head on; naturally with lots of love, shade, and prayer along the way.

The Fire This Time Festival, the destination for early career and emerging playwrights from the African diaspora, announces its 2020 dates. The 14-day festival, presented in collaboration with FRIGID New York, which annually honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will take place from January 20 to February 2, 2020. This year, seven commissioned dramatists will be presented in repertoire as part of the annual celebration held at the Kraine Theater in the East Village.

Lone Star Theatre Company has announced that Kat Lozano joins ANIMAL HUSBANDRY as lead producer. The London based, Texas born, actress joins a team of producers that include producer Elda Ruiz-Dawson and associate producers Ramiro & Lupita Davila, Charles Barksdale, and Luis Ochoa-Andrade. David Davila's Animal Husbandry will premiere at the Under St. Mark's Theatre as part of the New York International Fringe Festival this October 2019 with direction by Sidney Erik Wright and intimacy choreography by Adele Rylands. The play stars David Michael Kirby and Daniel Anthony Hidalgo with lighting design by Hao Bai and costume design by Keyon Woods.

Lone Star Theatre Company is proud to announce that David Davila's Animal Husbandry will premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival this October 2019. This will be Lone Star Theatre's first full production after eight years of successfully bringing a?oeTexas Pages to New York Stagesa?? through its on-going reading, one-act play, and concert series. With direction by Sidney Erik Wright and starring David Michael Kirby and Daniel Anthony Hidalgo, Animal Husbandry will open October 10th at the Under St. Mark's Theater. 

The Billie Holiday Theatre Artistic and Executive Director Dr. Indira Etwaroo announced the line-up today for The Billie Holiday Theatre's Fall 2019 Season and 2019 a?" 2020 Season Highlights at their newly-renovated home at Restoration Plaza on 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216. This historic landmark theater a?" theater home to the largest community of African Americans in the nation: Central Brooklyn a?" encompassing a 199-seat theater, state-of-the-art studio spaces, a gallery space, and outdoor plazas, has been home to world-class storytelling for 47 years. Forged in the sociocultural and aesthetic kiln of the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements, The Billie Holiday Theatre continues to celebrate the diversity, intersectionality, and complexity of the African diaspora from around the corner and around the world with an almost-five decade, keenly honed consciousness for social justice through narrative.

The Frank Silvera Writers Workshop kicks off its forty-seventh annual reading series this Monday September 9th at 7pm with David Davila's immigration drama, Aztec Pirates And The Insignificance Of Life On Mars. The reading, directed by Nilsa Reyna, features Ollie Corchado, Cory Alexander, Lillian Andrea De Leon, Julia Botero, Selina Michelle Fonseca, Gerard Lucero, Alexandra Castro, and Jatnna Marte.

Alicia Foxworth's period drama Ghost Writer will bring the curtain down on the 2018 -19 season of the Frank Silvera Writer's Workshop monthly play reading series in partnership with The Billie Holiday Theatre.

Max Crumm (You're The One That I Want) and Natasha Yvette Williams (Waitress) will star in a private industry reading of Douglas Lyons's new family comedy Chicken & Biscuits. Directed by Zhailon Levingston (Neptune), the full cast includes Danny Johnson (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Gotham), Pat Bowie (The Trip to Bountiful), Gayle Turner (The Wiz), Akira Golz (Matilda), Alana Raquel Bowers (What to Send Up, When it Goes Down), and Justin Sams (When We Rise).

The Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop will present Douglas Lyons's new family comedy Chicken & Biscuits Monday May 13th at 7pm; at The Billie Holiday Theatre. Chicken & Biscuits, written in residence at The Directors Company, has previously been selected and performed in the Front Porch Reading Series and Queen Theatre's 2019 New American Voices Reading Series.

On March 9 in Brooklyn and March 16 in Los Angeles, The Billie Holiday Theatre, in collaboration with Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop, presented its third annual monologue showcase, 50IN50: LETTERS TO OUR DAUGHTERS, to honor Women's History Month.

David Heron's Against His Will, the provocative legal drama in which a young Jamaican man accuses his female boss of sexually assaulting him, will return to The New Vibe Lounge in Rockville Centre Long Island following a sold out, standing room only performance at the venue last month.