25 Plays from the Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth and Black Theater

While the past decade proved to be some of the most tumultuous times in modern US history, the Black community has been resilient, opening up dialogues and sustaining advocacy. Nowhere has this been more apparent than at the Obie Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival in New York City.

Since being founded in 2009, this theatre festival has become the destination for emerging and early career playwrights from the African diaspora. Inequality in education and healthcare, skewed and negative images of Black people in mainstream media, racism in policing, widespread gentrification and its effects on multi-generational Black neighbourhoods, and the growth of Black love; these conversations have been happening in the US, and The Fire This Time Festival has borne witness.


25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth, and Black Theatre reflects this fantastic legacy, containing 25 ten-minute plays originally produced by the eponymous festival. Together, these pieces bookend the Black experience in the US from 2009 to the present day: from the hope for further progress and equity under the Obama administration, to the existential threat faced by Black people under the Trump presidency.

Edited and curated by Kelley Nicole Girod, the anthology divides the plays into seven thematic sections concerning multi-faceted aspects of the Black experience, featuring work by seminal writers such as Katori Hall, Antoinette Nwandu, Dominique Morisseau, C.A. Johnson, and Marcus Gardley. Both timely and timeless, 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festivalpresents an exciting, eclectic mix of twenty-first century theater that is perfect for study, performance, and reflection.

Kelley Nicole Girod: While serving as the Executive Director of The Fire This Time, Girod has also held the positions of Producing Director at the historic Black theater, The Billie Holiday, in Brooklyn, NY, as well as Programming Associate at New York City’s The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture. Kelley is also an award winning playwright whose work has been featured in NYC, she was Atlantic Theater’s 2019 Launch Commission Playwright, and Sheen Center’s 2020 fellow, and is recent nominee of the prestigious Paul Robeson Award. Through The Fire This Time, her work at the above institutions, and her work as a playwright in the community, she has built relationships with the wider theater community and TFTT has had collaborations with The Apollo, North Carolina Black Rep, Center Theater Group, Hibernian Hall (Boston), Crossroads Theater (NJ), National Black Theater, and Classical Theater of Harlem to name a few.