DC New Play Development
Moderated by: Kelsey Mesa
Panel: Otis Ramsey-Zöe, Karen Ann Daniels, Danielle A. Drakes, Psalmayene 24
Booking and details
Dates Sun, Feb 02, 2025, 12pm
Tickets $20 (or $150 for an All-Access Pass)
Please note: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted.
The Folger Theatre’s Reading Room Festival and the productions that have emerged from the series are part of the DC theater community’s new play development ecosystem. What other opportunities exist in our city for artists to develop new works? What opportunities can be created if we examine our collective resources as writers, directors, leaders, audiences, and organizations? By working and dreaming together, we can move toward creating more space for a new generation of plays. We can contribute to the national landscape of the American theater in ways only DC can.
Join moderator Kelsey Mesa (Kennedy Center Manager of Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival) with Karen Ann Daniels (Folger Theatre Artistic Director), Danielle A. Drakes (director, Towson University professor, and Taffety Punk Company member), Otis Ramsey-Zoë (Arena Stage Literary Director Manager), and Psalmayene 24 (playwright, director, and actor). Together, the panel will continue a conversation on new play development efforts in the DC area that was started at the Kennedy Center’s Local Theatre Festival.
How to attend the festival
Individual events – $20
Reading Room Festival All-Access Pass – $150
Access to all staged readings, panel discussions, workshops, and community celebrations included in the Festival.
Students – Free admission to readings and conversations
Admitted free one-half hour before event start time, with a valid ID.
Who’s Who
Karen Ann Daniels
Karen Ann Daniels is the Director of Programming and Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Artistic Director of Folger Theatre. A native San Diegan, she is an accomplished actor, director, playwright, vocalist, musician, and community organizer. Prior to joining the Folger, she was director of the Mobile Unit at The Public Theater in NYC, producing tours around all five boroughs of NYC bringing the tools of theater to incarcerated community through Mobile Unit in Corrections (MUiC).
In her prior role as the associate director of The Old Globe’s Arts Engagement department, she managed community partnerships, and created, piloted, and implemented cornerstone programs such as Globe for All, Behind the Curtain, coLAB, Community Voices, and Reflecting Shakespeare. She is a thought-leader, facilitator, and contributing architect for creating tools to help cultural institutions integrate anti-racism, equity, accessibility, community and audience engagement, and shared leadership as a long-term mission-oriented strategy for organizational growth. She is a 2021 Fellow at the Atlantic Fellows on Racial Equity, a network of leaders from the US and South Africa working to build expansive new futures in which Black people, and all people of color, are seen, valued, and respected. She served as chair of the City of Chula Vista’s Cultural Arts Commission, as well as the New California Arts Fund Leadership and Learning Committees, and is a co-producer and facilitator for the biannual Shakespeare in Prisons Conference and Network. In recent years, her creative work focused on co-creation as a composer/lyricist/playwright for musicals like gather ‘round and The Ruby in Us, centering the lives and stories of community.
Danielle A. Drakes
Kelsey Mesa
Kelsey Mesa (Moderator) Folger Theatre: The Cuban Vote (Reading Room Festival); Taffety Punk Theatre Company: Othello, Antigonick, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, The Trojan Women, Charm. The Hub Theatre Company: The Pavilion, The Magi, Wish List; Catholic University: Crimes of the Heart; University of Maryland, College Park: Fefu and Her Friends. Awards: 2024 Helen Hayes Outstanding Production of a Play: La Salpêtrière (playwright). The Inkwell: Artistic Associate. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Manager of Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and Resident Director of the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive.
Psalmayene 24
Psalmayene 24 (Panelist) Folger: Metamorphoses (Director). Arena Stage: Tempestuous Elements (Director), Ruined (Actor), Cuttin’ Up (Actor), Anthems (Actor); Studio Theatre: The Colored Museum (Director), Good Bones (Director), Flow (Director), Pass Over (Director); Ford’s Theatre: Necessary Sacrifices: A Radio Play (Director); Mosaic Theater: Monumental Travesties (Playwright), Dear Mapel (Playwright/Actor), Les Deux Noirs (Playwright), Native Son (Director), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence; Joe’s Movement Emporium: Out of the Vineyard (Playwright); Theater Alliance: The Blackest Battle (Playwright); Word Becomes Flesh (Director); Imagination Stage: The Freshest Snow Whyte (Playwright/Director), Cinderella: The Remix (Playwright/Director), P. Nokio: A Hip-Hop Musical (Playwright/Director), Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip-Hop Creation Myth (Playwright/Director); African Continuum Theatre Company: Free Jujube Brown! (Playwright/Actor). TV/Film: The Freewheelin’ Insurgents (Writer/Director/Actor); HBO’s The Wire (Actor). Helen Hayes and Imagination Award recipient.
Otis Ramsey-Zoë
Otis Ramsey-Zoë (he/him/love) is a care worker, dramaturg, director, and Literary Manager at Arena Stage. He has developed new works at such institutions as South Coast Rep, Playwrights Center, Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and Sundance Institute. He has held posts in Dramaturgy at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and Carnegie Mellon University, Theatre at Northeastern University, Women’s Studies and Honors Humanities at University of Maryland, and Theatre Arts at Howard University. He was Associate Artistic Director at banished? productions, Future Classics Program Coordinator at The Classical Theatre of Harlem, Literary Manager at Center Stage.