March 16 to 17, 2024 Mosaic Theater will elebrate the history of H Street at a two-day festival at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. And it’s all free to attend.
The multi-year arc of Mosaic’s H Street Oral History Project, spearheaded by the Andrew W. Mellon Playwright-in-Residence of playwright Psalmayene 24, culminates with the H Street Oral History Project Festival.
Using DC’s H Street corridor as a source of inspiration and preservation, local playwrights Dane Figueroa Edidi, Gethsemane Herron-Coward, and James J. Johnson have written new plays inspired by interviews with residents past and present.
Staged readings of these new works will be the focal point of the festival, which will also include music and food, H Street neighborhood walking tours led by Justice Walks, and discussions curated in collaboration with the DC History Center.
The H Street Oral History Project is an ambitious, multi-year venture in partnership with DC Public Libraries and with from the National Endowment of the Arts to chronicle the H Street Corridor. Three DC playwrights—with from one dramaturg—interviewed past and current residents of the H Street neighborhood and create three brand new full-length plays and three monologues surrounding the history and enduring legacy of the neighborhood.
The interviews focus on the protests in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the summer 2020 protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd.
This three-day festival at the Atlas Performing Arts Center is the culmination of that work, where all three plays will premiere as staged readings. The Festival will be a celebration of one of DC’s most enduring neighborhoods. All interviews and plays will be archived in the DC Public Library oral history collections.
Schedule of Events
Saturday March 16:
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Justice Walks Walking Tour of H Street Corridor
1:00-3:00 p.m.: Reading of Central Time by James J. Johnson followed by a talk-back in the Lang Theatre/Atlas
3:30-4:30 p.m.: Psalmayene 24 and Jane Lang In Conversation in the Lang Theatre/Atlas on Redeveloping the Atlas and the Growth of the Arts on H Street
7:00-9:00 p.m.: Reading of SMOKE by Dane Figueroa Edidi followed by a talk-back in the Lang Theatre/Atlas
Sunday March 17
1:00-1:45 p.m.: DC History Center Discussion about the Past, Present and Future of the H Street Corridor in the Lang Theatre/Atlas
2:00-5:00 p.m.: Reading of George on H by Gethsemane Herron-Coward followed by talk-back in Lang Theatre/Atlas
