BILLIE HOLIDAY THEATRE INC

Other - A 50-year pioneer in the arts and social justice space, The Billie is the cultural anchor to the nation's largest community of African descent - Central Brooklyn, a beacon for world-class art rooted in social justice, and the only multi-platform performing arts center with a presenting, residency, and education program led by, for, and accountable to people of African descent in New York City. Our programming consists of a year-long calendar of events including 2-3 mainstage programs per year, an annual monologue series for Black women writers, 1-2 limited runs of works in development, our monthly playwrights reading series in collaboration with Frank Silvera Writers? Workshop, our monthly Skylight Open series for emerging musicians and spoken word artists, and free visual arts exhibits in our lobby and Skylight Galleries. Our Education and Humanities programming serves local audiences ages 3-103 through the Youth Arts Academy's multi-disciplinary instruction, community workshops, talks and experiences, and the Black Arts Institute, our university-level theater training program reaching a national audience of 18-30 year olds. The Billie's #StayatHome Reading Series, launched in late March 2020 galvanized artists from around the country with online productions of Richard Wesley's Autumn with the reunion of the 2017 AUDELCO Award-winning Best Play of the Year Cast; 50in50: Letters to Our Sons, including Pauletta Washington and Phyllis Yvonne Stickney; James Sheldon's Reparations with the 2019 AUDELCO Award-winning cast 50in50: Love in the Time of Corona, featuring Jason Dirden, Lamman Rucker and more; Frederick Douglass' profound speech, What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?; and a virtual edition of The NOVA Film Festival.

Before it Hits Home - Cheryl West's Before It Hits Home, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, tells the brutal and at times tender story of the impact of the AIDS crisis on an African American in the midwest and their community. Aptly timed, a 2019 report by the Center for Disease Control shows that after five years of declining rates, HIV infections are on the rise in Brooklyn, the only borough that saw an increase. Black individuals are more than three times as likely as their white counterparts to be infected with the virus and once infected, they are twice as likely to die from the disease. Originally scheduled for Spring 2020, Before It Hits Home was in its third week of rehearsals and the set had been built when the COVID-19 shutdown occurred. We will instead present 34 performances in October-November 2021.