Rayne

Rayne’s project, MASC., is a solo play built on audience interaction, following a Black, trans protagonist who, when confronted by the return of his estranged father from prison, must navigate survival through encounters with lovers, professors, and Gods. To deepen the work’s participatory nature, Rayne will host a public development week in partnership with Theatre Exile, including multiple playtests with ten paid community advisors, a free work-in-progress showing, a talk-back, and a celebratory “Spring Fling” dance party inspired by a scene from the play. Advisors will be selected through an open application with priority for Black and trans participants, bringing lived experience and social insight to the development process and shaping how MASC. engages audiences in questions of masculinity, identity, and transformation.

Ang(ela) Bey's full-length play, WhatWhiteJesusDo? is an Afrofuturist dark comedy about the End-times. When all the white Christians are raptured, the protagonist Miracle struggles to reconcile her faith with her Blackness and teams up with Jake, a white atheist, to survive the Great Tribulation. During this phase of the project, Ang will conduct a series of reading groups, recorded interviews and dialogues with folxs of many races and creeds, to create a rich communal archive that informs WWJD's plot, thematic, and character development.