I am excited to work with Vincent Terrell Durham as the playwright for the piece I am directing entitled 61 UNUSED PAGES…more about the play later. I was first introduced to Vincent was around Juneteenth in the midst of the pandemic. With the onset of the pandemic the world was shaken by the murder of George Floyd, and many organizations and theatres swiftly moved to find ways to honor Floyd’s legacy and bring attention to the continued disregard of Black lives. I was fortunate to be apart of a streamed reading of Vincent’s play POLAR BEARS, BLACK BOYS & PRAIRIE FRINGED ORCHIDS. I was amazed at the wit, power, and comedy that Vincent had in this text that highlighted in such a profound way what we were navigating through as a country as we wrestled with this challenge of disregarding and disrespecting Black Americans. I found myself scouring the New Play Exchange, a site for playwrights to share their work and hit the jackpot, and found Vincent’s page and went down the worm hole reading several of his pieces, including a short play called NOW which will be presented in March for American Stage and Creative Pinellas’ play reading series, FIRST MONDAYS.
ABOUT VINCENT
Vincent Terrell Durham is an award-winning LA-based playwright, born and raised in Binghamton, NY. His plays include MASKING OUR BLACKNESS (Winner, 2020 Samuel French Short Play Festival), POLAR BEARS, BLACK BOYS & PRAIRIE FRINGED
ORCHIDS (2020 Semi-finalist, O’Neill), 61 UNUSED PAGES, THE FERTILE RIVER, TWELVE, and the short play collection VOL. 1—A POST-RACIAL AMERICA. His monologue “A Park For Children To Pretend In” has been published in 08:46 Fresh Perspectives, A Collection of Monologues by Black Playwrights. Recently, Vincent developed new work as part of Utah Shakespeare Festival’s new play program Words Cubed and he has received commissions from Playground San Francisco/Planet Earth Arts and City Lights Theater. A proud gay man of color, Vincent writes to contribute to the legacy of Black theater-makers and wishes to bring his unique and talented voice to film and television.
