BARS Release & Thanks Rogue Theater Festival!
- Garland Thompson
- Aug 2, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 7, 2025
DIGITAL STREAMING
We're so excited to be a digital presenter for Coni Koepfinger's Social Insecurity, now extended through August 17th, 2025, at the Rogue Theater Festival!
We love the Times Square Billboard shoutout!
Tickets are still available:
NEW RELEASE
In case you missed it live, we're thrilled to release BARS Or, How Hip-Hop Saved My Life, by Germaine Shames directed by Jacqueline Springfield! Featuring Rachel F. Hirsch, Lance A. Brown, Zoe Jourdain, Melissa Grogan, and Hannibal Tabu.
Synopsis:
When an underpaid Jewish World Lit' professor in the throes of a midlife crisis lands a gig ghostwriting lyrics for a young Black hip-hop producer, racial and sexual tensions collide. In the gritty, vibrant culture of American hip-hop, an unlikely pair of strivers brave the minefield of Black-White confrontation to capitalize on the one bankable commodity they share: words.
Will their collaboration meet with success or end up one more casualty of a system that values myth over truth? Can music bridge the social barriers of race and class? Can friendship? With rhymed invective and thwarted love, BARS lays bare the personal cost of systemic racism to those, Black and White, caught in its web.
About the Playwright:
Germaine Shames is a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellow, a Kilroys List playwright, and recipient of her state's Literary Fellowship in Fiction. She is the author of the award-winning novels, Between Two Deserts and You, Fascinating You. Writing under the pen name Casper Silk (Hotel Noir, Echo Year), she has been compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, and P.D. James "on steroids”.
After covering world conflicts as a correspondent and witnessing firsthand the gamut of senseless tragedies behind the headlines, she realized that hard news could never convey an iota of the deeper story she was gleaning. She turned to fiction writing, learning that she could find light in the most horrific situations and leave readers (and now an audience) with hope.
As a playwright, Shames has celebrated premieres across the U.S. as well as abroad and been recognized in several festivals, including LTA Annual Playwriting Competition 2025 (First Place), Women’s Voices 2024, Fulton Theatre's Stories of Diversity 2023, Pegasus Theatre's Fresh Reads 2023 (First Place), Page to Stage 2023, ThinkTank TYA's inaugural Playwrights Festival, Cimientos 2019, and Festival of New American Theatre 2018.
Watch the full season's play reading series here.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Peace and Thanks!
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