MOJOAA Performing Arts Company Presents:

Mother Nature & Mother's Day by Dr. Lisa B. Thompson

MOTHER NATURE
In a world where men over 40 years old find themselves rejected and isolated, what will a mother and her adult daughter do with the aging men in their lives?

MOTHER’S DAY is a comedy where Afro-futurism meets motherhood. What happens when a black woman wants to “lean in” but first must find adequate childcare? In this one-act play the search for a nanny for one professional couple forces them to confront a litany of black maternal stereotypes.

Directed by Keyanna Alexander

Cast of Mother Nature
Mother: Phyllis Morrison
Daughter: Alyse James

Cast of Mother's Day
Veronica Taylor-Warren: AhDream Smith
Maurice Warren: Rodney Martin
Big Mama 1850: Robin Marshall
American Mother 2009B: Alexandria Smalls
Afro Queen 3000X: Tyanna West

Theme song by Dasan Ahanu and Scott Warren
Sound Design and Engineering by Only Us Media
Hosted by Monèt Noelle Marshall
Produced by MOJOAA Performing Arts Company
Funded in part by The Black Seed Grant, Manbites Dog Theatre, Cypress Fund, Triangle Community Foundation, United Arts Council and our MOJOAA fam!

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Welcome to our first interview on Red Clay Plays with Dr. Lisa B. Thompson! In this episode we talk about Afrofuturism, mothers who make art, writing the comedy out of pain and, of course, being a Southern Black playwright.

Lisa B. Thompson is an award winning playwright, scholar, and professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of three books, Beyond The Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (University of Illinois Press, 2009), Single Black Female (Samuel French Inc. 2012), and Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues: Three Plays (Northwestern University Press, 2020).

Thompson’s plays, which have been produced off-Broadway, throughout the US and internationally, include Single Black Female (LA Weekly Theatre Award for Best Comedy nominee, Irma P. Hall Black Theatre Award Best Play winner), Underground, (Austin Critics Circle David Mark Cohen New Play Award winner, Broadway World Regional Awards Best Writing of an Original Work nominee), Monroe (Austin Playhouse Festival of New Texas Plays winner), The Mamalogues (Broadway World Regional Awards Best Writing of an Original Work winner), and Dinner (Crossroads Theatre Genesis New Play Festival).

Thompson has received teaching awards from the Texas Exes and the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. Her scholarly and creative work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies; the University of Texas at Austin’s Humanities Institute; the W. E. B. DuBois Research Institute at Harvard University; the Michele R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research; the Five Colleges, the University of California’s Office of the President; Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity; Hedgebrook; the Millay Colony for the Arts; and MacDowell.

You can find Dr. Lisa's work at:
https://lisabthompson.com
Twitter: @drlisabthompson
Instagram: @drlisabthompson

Learn more about MOJOAA at:
www.MOJOAA.org
Facebook: @MOJOAApac
Instagram: @MOJOAApac

MOJOAA Performing Arts Company Presents:

Ama and Coltrane, Beware Beware! by Raven Monroe
Two young Black people try to survive a night at home, while the Beasty, a dark force that preys on people like them, is on the loose.

Directed by Leroy Ediage

Cast of Ama and Coltrane, Beware, Beware!
Ama: Sa'a Melioge
Coltrane: Jefferson Gichuru
Beasty: Leroy Ediage
Radio: John Ivy

Theme song by Dasan Ahanu and Scott Warren
Sound Design and Engineering by Only Us Media
Hosted by Monèt Noelle Marshall
Produced by MOJOAA Performing Arts Company
Funded in part by The Black Seed Grant, Manbites Dog Theatre, Cypress Fund, Triangle Community Foundation, United Arts Council and our MOJOAA fam!

Follow us on Facebook, IG and visit our website!

In this episode we have the pleasure of speaking with playwright and screenwriter, Raven Monroe! We get into about Black girls playing all kinds of roles, writing across genres and mediums and how growing up in the South impacts her work.

Raven Monroe is an actor and playwright from Charlotte, NC. She is a proud graduate of UNC Charlotte (BA ‘16) and NYU Tisch School of the Arts (MFA ‘19) where she honed her skills in the dramatic arts, studying under theatre director Oskar Eustis and playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. As a writer, her intention is to create works that send Black women and girls on adventures, providing representation and showing Black girls that they can be the star of any story. Her works include Mary Davis: Adventures in the Godlands, which was a quarterfinalist at the 2019 Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards, and Sissy & Gen, which is a quarterfinalist in the 2020 Emerging Screenwriters Genre Screenplay Competition. She currently serves as the Vice President on the board of the North Carolina chapter of Women in Film & Television, where she created the bi-weekly live panel “Filmmaker Fridays”, which airs on the NC WiFT Facebook page.

You can find Raven's work on New Play Exchange https://newplayexchange.org/users/36026/raven-monroe

Learn more about MOJOAA at:
www.MOJOAA.org
Facebook/Instagram: @MOJOAApac

MOJOAA Performing Arts Company Presents:

The Waterflower by Tristan André Parks 

This lyrical, poetic piece,  a nod to Zora' Neale Hurston's Mules and Men, takes us on a journey through family, brotherhood, loss and what all exists in the water inside and around us.

Directed by Korinn Annette Jeffries

Performed by Alicia Johnson

Theme song by Dasan Ahanu and Scott Warren

Sound Design and Engineering by Only Us Media

Hosted by Monèt Noelle Marshall

Produced by MOJOAA Performing Arts Company

Funded in part by The Black Seed Grant, Manbites Dog Theatre, Cypress Fund, Triangle Community Foundation, United Arts Council and our MOJOAA fam!


Follow us on Facebook, IG and visit our website!

In this episode we have the pleasure of speaking with playwright, actor, choreographer and dancer, Tristan André Parks. This conversation is like eavesdropping on your two artsy cousins. We talk about what we are dreaming, how art impacts us and of course, being a Southern Black theatre maker.

Tristan André. Brother. Sun. Black memory cultural worker. Lover of his community. Yes, beloveds. You are that community. Tristan, an alum of the MFA Professional Actor Training Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a Southern multi-hyphenate artist whose credits include PlayMakers Repertory Company's Life of Galileo, Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Leaving Eden, Twelfth Night and The Crucible, andDC's Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of Baldwin's The Amen Corner. Tristan is represented by About Artists Agency and is a member of Actors' Equity Association. Peace and love to all. 

You can find Tristan’s work at tristanandre.com and follow him on IG at @fishgritsandcollardgreens

Learn more about MOJOAA at:

www.MOJOAA.org

Facebook/Instagram: @MOJOAApac

MOJOAA Performing Arts Company Presents:

How to Tie a Tie written by Brittney S. Harris

Directed by Danielle Harris

Cast of How to Tie a Tie

Charles Walker: Vincent Drayton

Grace Walker: Julia Drayton

Theme song by Dasan Ahanu and Scott Warren

Sound Design and Engineering by Only Us Media

Hosted by Monèt Noelle Marshall

Produced by MOJOAA Performing Arts Company

Funded in part by The Black Seed Grant, Manbites Dog Theatre, Cypress Fund, Triangle Community Foundation, United Arts Council and our MOJOAA fam!

Follow us on Facebook, IG and visit our website!

In this episode we have the pleasure of speaking with playwright, professor, and researcher Brittney S. Harris! Listen in as we share our belief in the power of the arts to change hearts and minds, finding stories in our communities and of course, the joys of being a Southern Black theatre maker.

Brittney S. Harris is an Assistant Professor of Theatre in the Department of Communication and Theatre Arts at Old Dominion University. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Georgia. Brittney’s research efforts are supported and documented by the practices of PaR (Performance as Research). Her areas of expertise are in Race and Performance, Theatre for Social Change, and performative community-engaged programming.

Throughout the Southeast regions of VA, NC, DC, and GA, Brittney has created several community engagement-based projects and conducted workshops on solo performance development and devised theatre at several national interdisciplinary conferences including the 1st Annual Richmond Fringe Festival, 2020 Mid-America Theatre Conference, Black Theatre Network Annual Conference, and 2019 Gender, Bodies & Technology Conference: TechnoLogics: Power and Resistance. 

 Most recently, her short play The Amazin’ Jason was an official section for the Fade to Black Theatre Festival, Houston TX and she is workshopping and touring her two solo performance projects, The Intersection: The Sandra Bland Project and Being B.A.D.; each project explores the adverse effects of violence in social media on the personal psyche and how narrative-based storytelling is used as a vessel for social resilience and redemption.

You can find Brittney’s work at 

https://brittneysharris.com

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Learn more about MOJOAA at:

www.MOJOAA.org

Facebook/Instagram: @MOJOAApac