Overtime Theater celebrates Black History Month with launch of New Play Development series

click to enlarge Pictured from left to right: Shania Thomas (actress), Danielle King (actress) and Aisha Love (director). - Jade Esteban Estrada
Jade Esteban Estrada
Pictured from left to right: Shania Thomas (actress), Danielle King (actress) and Aisha Love (director).
The Overtime Theater will debut its New Play Development series on Thursday with a staged reading featuring former Councilwoman Jada Andrews-Sullivan.

Throughout the month of February, the program will spotlight Black playwrights in observance of Black History Month.

The Overtime has chosen Los Angeles playwright LaDarrion Williams' Coco Queens for Thursday's debut reading. As part of the program, Williams' full-length play will receive two rehearsals, a public staged reading and an audience feedback session.

"For a playwright, a staged reading is an important preparatory step in the creative process," Jade Esteban Estrada, the new artistic director of the Overtime Theater, said in a statement. "Over the course of the year, I invite all San Antonio actors and directors to take part in what I hope will be an artistically rewarding program at our theater."

The play's four castmembers include Danielle King, Shania Thomas, Andrews-Sullivan and Denise Swain. Aisha Love will direct the staged reading.

"This play is about heritage and the beauty and complexities of Black womanhood who had to keep on keepin' on," Williams said in a statement. "I'm so excited to share this with San Antonio audiences for Black History Month."

$9, 7 p.m. Thursday, February 3, Overtime Theater, 5409 Bandera Rd., Suite 205, (210) 577-7562, theovertimetheater.org.


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