Lineup Announced For the 4th Annual Festival Of New Plays At JAG Productions

Every February for the past three years, JAG Productions has invited African-American theatre artists to spend a week in White River Junction, Vermont to further the development of a new play or solo performance. Over the course of the one-week residency, three to five projects receive an intensive workshop, constructive feedback, and a staged reading for the public at Briggs Opera House. This year we are excited to announce a new partnership with the Hopkins Center for the Arts, where we will be concluding our festival with our final reading at the Bentley Theater!

They have announced the fourth edition of their festival of new works in African-American theatre, JAGfest 4.0! They will welcome their largest group of playwrights yet, including Vermont's own Isaiah A. Hines from Burlington. Presented February 7-9, JAGfest 4.0 will include five staged readings of their works, over the course of three days, each featuring a post-show conversation following each event. The festival is celebrated after the first play on Friday, February 7 (further details to be announced). Champagne toast, snacks are free of charge for JAGfest ticket holders.

The five plays will be:

JAGfest 4.0 | (Re)surface: A Poetics of Fish/Flesh

Written by Isaiah A. Hines

Friday, February 7, 7:30PM

(Re)surface: A Poetics of Fish/Flesh is best understood as a kind of 'body drama'- a form of expression that incorporates poetry, prostheses, gesture, and jazz - cleaving a critical site/ space for exploring questions of blackness and being. Writing after Ntozake Shange, Isaiah draws upon her conception of the 'choreopoem' and 'a poetic imperative'. In this solo performance piece Isaiah considers the junctures, lacunae, and ambiguities that give form/texture to black queer disabled existence, thinking through the dramas of mundane life using notions of embodiment, agency, madness, speech, refusal, refuge, and unfreedom. (Re)surface functions as a living-moving cartography, attempting to map the oscillating processes of making and unmaking my Self - fleshing out the rituals of dis/embodiment thru movements that both counter-invest in the black queer body as a site of possibility and gesture toward more ethical and pleasurable modes of being in and with the world.

JAGfest 4.0 | A Curious Thing; or Superheroes K'ain't Fly

Written by Jeremy O'Brian

Directed by Tyler English-Beckwith

Friday, February 7, 8:00PM

Synopsis: Virgo and Aries are just past the newlywed stage when they start to reconsider their plans to become parents. As they ask the hard question they uncover deep-seated fears. A Curious Thing; or Superheroes K'ain't Fly is an animated and erratic play exploring the universal question of parenthood in a world laden with danger.

JAGfest 4.0 | The Problem with Magic, Is:

Written by Johnny G. Lloyd

Directed by NJ Agwuna

Saturday, February 8, 2:00PM

Synopsis: After the death of their mother, Jodie goes back home to help her brother, Clarence, run the family magic shop. But as the pressure mounts, they find themselves dealing not only with loss and new responsibility but also the forces of gentrification - and, perhaps, a malevolent snake deity called forth during a magic spell gone wrong. Will the magic shop and its owners find solid ground or will the business, the family, and the neighborhood get literally swept away by the currents of time? The Problem with Magic, Is: is a fantastical exploration on family, gentrification, time, and what it means to be home.

JAGfest 4.0 | Cntrl+Alt(Right)Del

Written by Sheldon Shaw

Directed by Kambi Gathesha

Saturday, February 8, 7:30PM

Synopsis: A white woman who attends The University of Texas brings her black African boyfriend home to meet her family for the first time. The woman's family, her father, uncle, and aunt (from her deceased mother's side) live and run a trailer park in Port Arthur, Texas. When the family and new boyfriend meet, there is a race and Culture Clash with twists and turns, and a big family secret unearthed, rehashed, and finally dealt with, sort of...

JAGfest 4.0 | Demons

Written by Keelay Gipson

Directed by Keelay Gipson

Sunday, February 9, 5:00PM

Bentley Theater, Hopkins Center for the Arts

Synopsis: When the death of The Patriarch brings a family home, they must reckon with the manifestations of grief and the haunting, sometimes otherworldly, realities that death can often bring to the surface. Demons is a magical meditation on getting older, the reality of losing your parents, inherited trauma, and that ever elusive attempt at living up to your family's idea of what your legacy will be.

Admission is $25 per performance! For more information and to buy tickets to the plays go to https://www.jagproductionsvt.com/jagfest-4-0

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