Fourth Annual BIPOC Playwrights Festival
Boise Contemporary Theater’s annual BIPOC Playwrights Festival, founded in 2021 with assistance from the Idaho Women’s Charitable Foundation, seeks to champion emerging and mid-career playwrights by connecting exceptional works with professional actors, directors, and technicians. The festival gives playwrights of color the chance to workshop their script during the week with a director and full cast. Hearing their words read out loud by professional actors provides valuable feedback. The festival culminates in two nights of staged readings. This experience helps inform their work, building the careers of playwrights of color, so they can keep telling their stories.
Attend all BIPOC Playwrights Festival offerings with a festival pass for $30, click HERE.
Playwrights' Panel - August 21st, 7pm (Free to attend, RSVP below)
Meet the playwrights selected to participate in this years BIPOC Playwrights Festival.
Ajax by Habib Yazdi - August 22nd, 7pm
It’s a hot summer in August, 1953, when a clean-cut American arrives at a peaceful villa in North Tehran. Kambiz, the villa’s gardener and pool boy, wonders if the new guest may be his ticket to a better life. As their friendship deepens, Kambiz finds himself entangled in strange affairs involving the Shah of Iran and the country’s elected prime minister. How will it end? Only the pool knows…
In Case of Bruising by Kamila Boga - August 23rd, 7pm
Triplets Milo, Otis, and Della’s lives are very different from other kids. They’re too big for the third grade, they don’t know when they’ll have food for lunch, and they don’t go home if their father is in a bad mood. They know their Mama spends more time in the hospital than other mothers. They know she is sad again. One afternoon, the triplets meet Calico, an odd boy with an odd name. They accept him quickly. As Daddy and Mama get worse, each child finds new ways to cope - some safer than others.
Dear God by Lisa Langford - August 24th, 2pm
Aliens have landed. After the initial shock, humans of all races and creeds join together to do what they do best: discriminate. Vonnie, a pastor of a Black church, refuses to take a vow stating that God is only the God of humans. This creates friction between Vonnie and her frightened parishioners, her devout husband, and an ex-lover who could destroy everything she’s worked for. Vonnie must decide if her gospel welcomes all, regardless of planetary origin, or if she will revel in a racism-free world where humans persecute aliens.
Artificial by Prince Gomolvilas - August 24th, 7pm
After a failed career in standup comedy, Simon has taken a soul-sucking job as an AI engineer at his younger brother Jetsada’s thriving chatbot company. But when the artistic bug bites again, Simon leverages the company’s AI technology to write jokes, and he hits open mic nights once again—much to Jetsada’s dismay. The sparring brothers’ sibling rivalry reaches epic proportions in this timely yet timeless exploration of a fractured Thai-American family, the uneasy intersection of art and technology, and the question of what it means to be human in the modern age. And yes, this synopsis was written by ChatGPT…. Or was it?
Between Here and There, I am Homeless by Luma Jasim - August 25th, 7pm
*Supported by MAP Fund NYC*
Iraqi-born artist and performer Luma Jasim presents a multidisciplinary performance art-work based on her story of growing up and living in Baghdad, of being a witness to three wars, debilitating sanctions, devastating sectarian violence, and finally immigration and acculturation in the U.S. The performance will combine projected video and animation, storytelling and spoken word, live ‘action painting,’ movement, live, composed and improvised music and sound by musician Ryan Garrett and pre-recorded music by Iraqi musician Ali Asim. The work aims to use the personal to address the political, to call into question and ultimately open up the space and time of the meaning of ‘home.’ Says Jasim, “I left Iraq after the U.S. invasion eighteen years ago and have not returned. The nostalgic feeling for home continues to haunt me, even as the U.S., Boise specifically, has now become my present home. Here, I have a ‘home’, yet, strangely, I feel homeless. My old home was invaded by my new home. My new home struggles to recognize me. I feel caught between places and times, very much in a space ‘in-between.”