FRIGID New York to present 13th Annual 

The Fire This Time Festival 

July 7-10

at The Kraine Theater 
85 E 4th St, New York

FRIGID New York will present the 13th Annual The Fire This Time Festival at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), July 7-10 with performances on Thursday, July 7 at 7pm, Friday, July 8 at 7pm, Saturday, July 9th at 2pm, Saturday, July 9th at 7pm, and Sunday, July 10th at 3pm. Performances will also be available to livestream from home. The World Premiere 10-minute plays will be co-directed by Zhailon Levingston (Chicken & Biscuits on Broadway; Patience) and actor, writer, director and TFTT alum Tracey Conyer Lee. 

The 2022 festival, which was postponed due to Covid, was originally scheduled to run January 17-February 6, 2022. Full length play readings will be presented in September 2022. The full cast and creative team for the 10-minute plays will be announced in June. 

Wildest Dreams by Agyeiwaa Asante

For over 187 years Maybelle and Jimmy Dale have haunted the Mason plantation, a now popular tourist attraction and event venue. Tired of their time on this plane, they wonder what it’ll take to get them to the other side.

Red Red Wine by Rachel Herron

Somm was well on her way to becoming the first Black female Master Sommelier in the world, but she gave it all up to produce her own wine label. Now she’s enlisted the help of her mentee, Mel, to help grow the brand; the only question is will Mel still be on board once she learns the secret ingredient in their best selling red? 

Gurlfriend (Black is Black) by Fedna Jacquet  

Two black girls drinking wine and living their best lives. #BlackGurlMagic #UnapologeticAF. We get to see THEM-jokes and bruises on display. By leaving the world outside, these best friends are able to bond in a fresh and delightful way…but what happens when the ever-shrinking classification of blackness threatens to exclude one of them? We ride the bold and excruciatingly confusing rollercoaster of identity, friendship, and regret to a new destination unknown to both Lea and Tonya. #Drama  

Wookies in the Wilderness by Marcus Scott 

Bishop and Smokey are best pals. Smokey will do anything for Bishop, who is in the midst of recovering from a recent trauma. Bishop will do anything for Smokey including going out to the mountainside wilderness of the Lake of the Ozarks to prep him for his upcoming Wilderness Survival test for the Eagle Scouts. But as the sun down begins and night falls upon them, the boys are reminded to truly be prepared for anything. Wookies in the Wilderness is a buddy drama about race, class, wasted potential, retaliation, Star Wars, and equal opportunity in Trump’s America. 

Mt. Sinai by Phillip Christian Smith

Gladys and Minerva, casual chemo friends, discuss life, the south, children, and the handsome cancer patient in Room A. Has Gladys finally fallen in with the bad girls in her twilight years?

By The Way by Lisa Rosetta Strum 

Two best friends have been quarantined for the past month. When one of the friends reveals their true feelings for the other, perceptions, prejudices and fears get exposed and a friendship could be changed forever.

Zhailon Levingston is a Louisiana-raised storyteller, director, and activist.

He is a Board Member and Creative Director for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, which he co-created, and teaches the Theatre of Change course at Columbia University. He is a Music Mentor Fellow and has done work with Idina Menzel’s A Broader Way Foundation. His directing credits include: Neptune (Dixon Place; Brooklyn Museum), The Years That Went Wrong (Lark; MCC), The Exonerated (Columbia Law School), Chariot Part 2 (Soho Rep/The Movement Theatre Company), Mother of Pearl (LaGuardia Performing Arts Center). He is the associate director of Primer for a Failed Superpower with Tony Award-winner Rachel Chavkin, and Runaways at The Public Theater with Sam Pinkleton. Most recently. he directed Chicken and Biscuits, which premiered on Broadway this past fall. Zhailon is also the resident director at Tina: The Tina Turner Musical on Broadway and the associate director of Hadestown in South Korea.

Tracey Conyer Lee is the director and choreographer of the reimagined return of Sistas! The Musical, currently running Off-Broadway. As a playwright her plays have been produced in NYC, Chicago, DC, Boston and Nashville. As an actor she has performed around the globe, yielding Carbonell, NAACP and Barrymore Awards. She’s a proud member of the 2019 Tony Award winning choir, Broadway Inspirational Voices and currently recurs as Detective Ross in seasons  3 & 4 of “FBI” on CBS. This summer she will star in the US premiere of Serving Elizabeth directed by Cezar Williams and her 6th production of Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar & Grill directed by Kevin R. Free. Lee is an audiobook narrator for Black authors of both fiction and non and the co-founder of Be Ready, which takes the professional presence training she teaches in corporate America and offers it free for Black youth preparing for higher education or the workforce.

The Fire This Time Festival was founded in 2009 by 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 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. In 2022 Bloomsbury books released the anthology 25 Plays From The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth and Black Theater which includes 25 ten-minute plays that were produced by The Fire This Festival over the past 11 seasons. The Fire This Time Festival collaborated with Center Theatre Group and Watts Village Theater Company to launch the initiative “Not A Moment, But A Movement” to amplify Black artists through three virtual events that pair playwrights, visual artists and musicians during 2021. www.firethistimefestival.com 

FRIGID New York’s mission is to provide both emerging and established artists the opportunity to create and produce original work without limit to content, form, or style, and to amplify their diverse voices. We do this by presenting an array of monthly programming, mainstage productions, an artist residency, and seven 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