Downtown Urban Arts Festival / DUAF

Creative Ammo Inc. / Downtown Urban Arts Festival

DUAF is back for a 24th season of live new plays by award-winning artists as well as some of the nation's best emerging playwrights.

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club

<p>This much anticipated season at La MaMa, DUAF presents three weeks of live theater featuring Tony nominee reg e gaines and acclaimed writer Kevin Powell as well as 16 new works by emerging playwrights.</p>

Schedule

LET MEZALUCA BUY YOUR CAR
by Desi Moreno-Penson | At a dark and lonely crossroads, a bickering Latine couple have experienced a car accident. She blames the car. He blames her nagging. And the car has quite a few opinions of his own.  || FOUR; INTERWOVEN by Erika Ji | four; interwoven is a concept quartet that explores what it means to choose love and togetherness, especially when it’s hard. Four musician-storytellers interweave their unique voices and instruments in this concept quartet blending folk band, theatre troupe, and choral music, composition with devising and improvising, singing without words.

 WED/ JUNE 3

FRIED LIVE SKIN
by Edwin Rivera-Arias | Tio Congo, who operates a front selling chucherías in the parking lot of Toñita's Caribbean Grill in Flushing, thinks he's the King of the Cocaine Coast. That is, until he reunites with Fran Iran, who catches him with his pants down—literally. || AMENDABLE
by Cris Eli Blak | At an elite East Coast college, four young women leading a progressive political club are forced into crisis when a controversial speaker is selected. Ideals of free speech collide with lived experience, exposing fractures of race, power, and performative allyship as a routine meeting spirals into an unflinching reckoning. 

 THU/ JUNE 4

UNDER THE INFLUENCE by reg e gaines | Two-time Tony-nominated playwright and Grammy-nominated lyricist Reg E. Gaines presents Under the Influence, an example of how art can inspire while focusing on the importance of paying homage to those who have forged a poetic path.

FRI/ JUNE 5 and  SAT/ JUNE 6

40 SECONDS by Jake Alexander | A journalist joins a famous graffiti artist at their favorite spot to tag, with limited time to make an impression before the next subway comes. Exploring art, risk, audience, and why we create. || AGON by Charlene Adhiambo | Moses Beatty, the artistic director of a leading NYC ballet company is pitched by VOGUE to interview controversial ballet veteran Lucinda St. James. The two hash out their resentment toward each other and their cutthroat industry in this sharp study of artistic ownership, mentorship, and the costs of Black excellence. 

 WED/ JUNE 10

A LESSON IN CAPTIVITY by Daniel Damiano | In an afterschool detention at an unnamed high school, a newly arrived teacher strives to maintain order between two very different students. || GIN & MILK by Antony Raymond | A late-night encounter between a guarded British romantic and a wounded American actuary in a tiny New York apartment spirals from awkward date into boozy confession and fierce intimacy, as two freshly heartbroken strangers test whether one fleeting night can help them release their ghosts—or just expose how broken they really are. 

 THUR/ JUNE 11

BLACK COMMIE BITCH by Tyler Exum | A disillusioned NYC Congresswoman appointed to lead a new HUAC committee secretly joins a Black Communist book club in her district, setting her on a collision course with her career, her politics, and herself. || THE TRIAL OF LUCY GUNNS by Joy | This is a one woman show about the cannibalistic effects of generational abuse. It deals with themes of loss, and loneliness which are also probable causes for Lucy’s insanity. Lucy isn’t a woman of many words until she drinks a glass of Pot Liquor, straight, no cornbread.

FRI/ JUNE 12

THE DEEP PLAY by Cece Suazo | Set in 1980s Brooklyn, this powerful dramedy follows 12-year-old Eduardo Garcia as he navigates the fragile boundaries of a Honduran family. When secrets of gender and trauma threaten to surface, the family must choose between devastation and unity. It is a universal story of survival, unmasking truth, and love. || DESERT FLOWERS by GOODW.Y.N. | A Black, Queer female soldier becomes the lone survivor of a terrible car accident. While burying her grief, she is deployed to Iraq in 2003, and suffers from dangerous encounters. 

 SAT/ JUNE 13

WHISKEY, HOPE, AND THE CLIMATE CLOCK by Marissa Raine Carlin (Book, Music, & Lyrics) & Carter Quinn Tanis (Book & Music) | Hope sits alone, watching the Climate Clock in Union Square tick down to zero. As an ‘End of the World Party’ rages on behind her, someone she would usually ignore sits beside her. They discuss the beauty of the past, anxieties of the present and their fear of the future. || SING TRUTH TO POWER by Howard Ho | A KPOP star who sings anthems against an evil dictator learns the devastating truth that she has been unwittingly complicit in his tyranny. What do you do when your art is being co-opted? 

 WED/ JUNE 17

LO SIENTO, MI ESPAÑOL ES TREMENDO MAL. by Brandon Urrutia | Family, Faith, and Flan.Three of the defining features of Hispanic Culture, but can you participate when you don't even speak the language? || AN AUDIT AT THE FUNERAL by Alexander Perez | Estrella works at the family funeral parlor with her Mom, Dad, and Grandfather. When a surprise audit sends the patriarch to an early grave, deep family secrets make themselves known in hilarious and terrifying ways. 

 THU/ JUNE 18

MY FATHER COULD NOT READ OR WRITE by Kevin Powell | Grammy-nominated poet Kevin Powell premieres an excerpt of his forthcoming choreopoem, GROCERY SHOPPING WITH MY MOTHER. The excerpt is titled "my father could not read or write" and will be performed by Kevin with live music. Coinciding with both Juneteenth and Father's Day Weekend, the two performances, directed by Tyneshia Hill, explore fatherhood, abandonment, mental health, healing, and the many meanings of freedom.

Downtown Urban Arts Festival / DUAF

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