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Story/Teller

Story/Teller Arts: Aleshea Harris with Nissy Aya

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Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT June 8, 2022

The Center for Fiction*
& Online via Zoom

In-person* tickets include a $10 bookstore voucher, redeemable toward the featured event book on the night of the event. All registrants will receive a link to livestream the event.

The Center for Fiction is thrilled to welcome one of the most innovative, uncompromising, boundary-breaking dramatists of today, Aleshea Harris, to celebrate the new publication of two of her plays. What to Send Up When It Goes Down is a play, a ritual, and a home-going celebration that bears witness to the physical and spiritual deaths of Black people as a result of racist violence. Is God Is, winner of the 2016 Obie Award and Relentless Award, collides the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, and Afropunk in a dark comedy of two sisters enacting righteous revenge.

Actors from both plays—Jessica Frances Dukes, Alfie Fuller, Kai Heath, Beau Thom, Denise Manning, Alana Raquel Bowers, Naomi Lorrain, and Javon Minter—will perform a dramatic reading, followed by a conversation with Aleshea Harris and writer, educator, and cultural worker Nissy Aya.

This event is part of an ongoing collaboration with Theatre Communications Group. Past events featured Jackie Sibblies Drury and Claudia Rankine, Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Heidi Schreck and Paula Vogel, and Sarah Ruhl and Matthew Aucoin.

By registering for this co-presented event, you agree to share your information with The Center for Fiction and Theatre Communications Group.


*Proof of vaccination is required to attend this event in person. Mask wearing is also required throughout the building. Accepted vaccination proofs include:

  • CDC vaccination card (or an image of it)
  • Excelsior Pass or Excelsior Pass Plus (or a printout of it)
  • A record of vaccination from the healthcare provider who administered your vaccine

Anyone 5 and older is required to show proof of two vaccine doses or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Anyone 18 and older must also present a government issued photo ID.

If you remain unvaccinated because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, please contact us at [email protected] for assistance or to request a reasonable accommodation.

IsGodIs_front-cover-Claire-Fennell-scaled

Featuring

  • Headshot by Costa Ciminello and Andrew Wofford

    Aleshea Harris

    Aleshea Harris

    Aleshea Harris’s play Is God Is (directed by Taibi Magar at Soho Rep. and Ola Ince at The Royal Court) won the Relentless Award, an Obie Award for playwriting, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. What to Send Up When It Goes Down, a play-pageant-ritual response to anti-Blackness, had its critically acclaimed NYC premiere in 2018 (directed by Whitney White and produced by The Movement Theatre Company), was featured in the April 2019 issue of American Theatre Magazine, and received a rare special commendation from the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The play was subsequently remounted at Woolly Mammoth, A.R.T., BAM, and Playwrights Horizons. Her newest play, On Sugarland (directed by Whitney White) premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in the spring of 2022. Awards: Windham-Campbell Prize, the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, The Horton Foote Prize, and the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Harris is a two-time MacDowell Fellow, and has enjoyed residencies at The Hermitage Artist Retreat, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi.

    Photo Credit: Costa Ciminello and Andrew Wofford

  • Screen Shot 2022-05-23 at 12.30.52 PM - Claire Fennell

    Nissy Aya

    Nissy Aya

    Nissy Aya (Nissy; she/ze/we) is a Black girl from the Bronx. She and all her younger selves tell stories and tall tales—while helping others to do the same. As a cultural worker and writer, we believe in the transformative nature of storytelling, placing those most affected by oppressive systems in the center, and examining how we move forward through healing justice and afrofuturist frameworks. Our creative work reflects those notions while exploring the lines between history and memory, detailing both the absence and presence of love, and giving all the life (and then some) to Black Femmes.

    Photo Credit: Halima McDoom

  • TCGLogo - Carla Cain-Walther (1)