Scribblin’ at the Automat

Spring, 1955. Two high school friends meet to catch up on ole times at an Automat – a restaurant where food and drink are served by coin-operated vending machines. The friends, James Baldwin and Richard Avedon, discuss their unknown futures, politics, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, and the artists’ passion to examine the American Identity in a post-war nuclear age. A few ‘guest’ appearances give them more than enough to talk about.

This reading is presented as part of the New Federal Theater’s Literary Breed Reading Series, a program dedicated to the art of Black-American storytelling.