Local playwrights Cynthia Hardeman, Michelle T. Johnson and Teresa Leggard share insights and experience

Today on Urban Connections local playwrights Cynthia Hardiman, Michelle T. Johnson and Teresa Leggard talk about their upcoming Fringe production and their experiences as Black Women playwrights.

Cynthia Hardeman is a family services advocate by day and playwright by night. She is the recent winner of Kansas City’s 2013 Project Playwright II competition. Her plays have been seen at the Unicorn’s 2012 Gala playwright’s showcase and the 2012 InTENsity Showcase at Fishtank Performance Studio, produced by Frank Higgins. Her play “Truth Be Dead” was chosen as a finalist in the 2012 WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory at Center Stage Theatre in Baltimore, MD. She then received a reading at The Unicorn Theatre in 2013, and the original premiere production as “Truth Stands” was in the 2013-2014 season at Coppin State University in Baltimore, MD. Cynthia’s full-length work is scheduled to have its World Premiere here in Kansas City at the Just Off Broadway Theatre in February of 2015. Cynthia writes plays because she wants to touch people, to reach people, to make them feel something, somehow, someway trapped in a moment they would otherwise ignore.”

Michelle T. Johnson is a Kansas City-based local and national diversity consultant and speaker. She has three published books on diversity, has a freelance column in the Kansas City Star as the “Diversity Diva” and is the Diversity Coordinator at St. Paul’s Episcopal Day School.

Johnson is also a playwright whose plays have been produced in the Barn Players of Mission, Kansas’ “2011 Six By Ten Festival,” the 2012 Kansas City Fringe Festival and by Potluck Productions in 2012. She was selected as a featured playwright in the Unicorn Theater’s Writer Showcase in February 2013, as a participant in the 2013 Project Playwright 2.0 competition and had her micro-play read at the 2013 World Theater Day celebration held by Mind The Gap Theater in New York City. She has had her plays picked and produced for playwriting festivals in Houston, Texas and Medford, Connecticut. Johnson’s play “Wiccans in the ‘Hood” was selected for and produced in the “Midwinter Madness Short Play Festival” in New York City in February 2013 and was the sixth best-attended show out of over 120 acts in the 2013 Kansas City Fringe Festival. Her play “Echoes of Octavia” will be produced by KC Melting Pot Theater next year. Her plays “Trading Places” and an expanded “Wiccans in the ’Hood” will be produced next year in the regular season of Brainspunk Theater of Philadelphia. Her play “The Negro Whisperer” was in the New Work Series Festival in New York City last month.

Teresa Leggard is a writer, editor, poet and playwright.  She’s also a member of The Writers Place, Kansas City’s own literary community center. Her upcoming plays “The Birthday” and “To Bed”  will be featured in the KC Fringe Festival in July 2014, as part of the productions Girl on Girl and More 4Play

.http://kc-fringe.ticketleap.com/girl-on-girl/details

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