The Gatekeepers Collective Issues Open Call for Playwriting Fellowship With Donja R. Love
(© David Gordon)
Harlem-based not-for-profit The Gatekeepers Collective, which serves same-gender loving (SGL) African-descended men, is looking for four young (18-35),
queer African American playwrights to contribute to Learning to Love, a public art and performance initiative highlighting the lives of SGL Black men.
Selected playwrights will be provided a stipend and partnered with older SGL men in dialogue about their journeys from varying degrees of invisibility and self-denial to self-acceptance and love. The writers will work closely with Award-winning playwright Donja R. Love (one in two) to develop one-act plays based on their conversations, which will then be presented in staged readings performed by professional actors under the direction of TGC Director, John-Martin Green in the fall.
"Because same-gender love among African Americans has long been deemed aberrant, unnatural, perverse or worse, and people recognized as same-gender loving have been subjected to all manner of violence, far too many were shut down, emotionally stunted and rendered invisible because of those traumas in relationship to our sexual identities," explains Green. "As a result, where our heterosexual counterparts were encouraged to celebrate the full range of their humanity, many SGL people, where we learned to love at all, learned to love later in life because of delayed self-acceptance and what might be understood as delayed adolescence."
Interested playwrights can learn more about how to apply here.
