NEW YORK CITY: Liberation Theatre Company (LTC) has selected four emerging playwrights for the 2022-23 Writing Residency Program: Calley N. Anderson, Brysen Boyd, Devon Kidd, and Zakeia Tyson-Cross. Now in its fifth year, the program provides dramaturgical and career support to playwrights over a 10-month period beginning in May. Playwrights will each complete the first draft of a new original full-length play, which will be presented in a public reading in the spring of 2023.
“We are delighted to be able to provide a fifth year of the Writing Residency Program and to welcome this new group of playwrights,” said LTC producing artistic director Sandra A. Daley-Sharif in a statement. “The four writers we have chosen come to us with varying degrees of playwriting experience, but all share exciting new ideas for stories they want to tell. We never tell playwrights what to write but rather help them clarify their ideas so that their plays are presented as they intend them.”
Supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, the program includes monthly cohort meetings with LTC staff to discuss progress and offer constructive feedback. Playwrights receive access to theatre events, conversations with working professional theatre artists, a writers’ retreat, and the chance to collaborate with a director and professional actors for a table read and public reading at the conclusion of the residency. Each writer will receive an honorarium upon successful completion of the program.
“We’re also excited to be able to provide this valuable and necessary opportunity to a population that desperately needs it,” added Daley-Sharif. “The past two years of the pandemic have affected theatre companies large and small, and we were certainly not immune. Our last group concluded in the Spring of 2021 and met entirely online. We have been planning how to return ever since. As submissions for this year demonstrated, there are still a great many playwrights who want and need this program.”
Calley N. Anderson is a Brooklyn-based playwright from Memphis. She is affiliated with American Theatre Group PlayLab, Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group, The Civilians R&D Group, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows. Anderson is also program manager at NY Writers Coalition.
Brysen Boyd is a playwright, TV writer, and essayist originally from Tacoma, Wash. He served as a writing fellow for season three of HBO’s Succession. He is the inaugural playwright-in-residence at Reverie Theater Company and a member of Youngblood/Ensemble Studio Theater.
Devon Kidd is a New York-based writer from Milwaukee, Wisc., who aspires to work in poetry, playwriting, television, and film. He graduated summa cum laude from Morehouse College and is currently a distinguished MFA playwright at Columbia University.
Zakeia Tyson-Cross is a Brooklyn-based creative writer whose work has appeared on platforms such as Harlem World Magazine, BRIC TV, BK Nation, and more. Zakeia is a current fellow playwright with the New Perspectives Theatre Company.
Founded in 2009, Liberation Theatre Company is a Harlem-based theatre development organization and a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas. The company aims to create a home for emerging Black playwrights to develop their work and express themselves artistically in a supportive and focused environment. LTC has supported more than 100 writers through its various programs. As of 2019, the budget of Fractured Atlas was $27.8 million.
