The New Black Fest, which supports innovative plays by and about black people, has brought together seven playwrights to create six plays about race and privilege in the United States in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case.
“The playwrights are Latino, white, Middle Eastern, Asian-American and black,” Mr. Adkins said Monday in announcing the project. It is called “Facing Our Truth: Ten-Minute Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege.” It was inspired, he said, by the debates and nationwide protests that greeted George Zimmerman’s July 13 acquittal in the killing of Mr. Martin, a unarmed black teenager. Mr. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., claimed that he killed Mr. Martin, 17, in self-defense.
The playwrights signed on for the project will have completed their work in early September, Mr. Adkins said. They are Dominique Morisseau (“Detroit ’67”); Winter Miller (“The Penetration Play”); Dan O’Brien (“The Body of An American”) in a collaboration with the musician Quetzal Flores; Marcus Gardley (“Every Tongue Confess”); Mona Mansour and Tala Manassah (co-authors of “After”); and A. Rey Pamatmat ( “Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them”).
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