Join the members of BlackFest’s first ever Writers’ Room, led renowned local Liverpool writer, dramaturg Maurice Bessman, as they share extracts of their work in this rehearsed reading. Working with professional actors and BlackFest Artistic Director Jubeda Khatun supported by Director Miriam Musa and Maurice, the writers have created original pieces based around the stories they want to tell and that are important to them. A number of the plays shared will be selected for further development and full production within ‘BlackFest Celebration of New Writers’ at the Liverpool’s Royal Court Studio.
BlackFest is a grassroots Black Arts festival piloted and founded in 2018 by Co-Founders, Artistic Director Jubeda Khatun and Daniel Sebuyange, freelance artist Blue Saint. The annual combined arts festival platforms, empowers and develops work by Black artists across community spaces and established venues running at the end of September.
BlackFest New Writers Programme is supported by Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres.
Featured artists include:
Adiam Solomon is an Eritrean-British writer, multidisciplinary artist and producer, trained in performance and visual arts. She has experience in writing, directing, producing and performing on stage and screen. She works in the creative and cultural industries.
Pari Richards is a multidisciplinary artist and trainee educator based in Liverpool. Graduating with a degree in drama from Liverpool Hope University in 2016 and undertaking further training at Rose Bruford Drama School in 2017. Pari has been acting, writing and performing across a number of projects and platforms. Pari has been involved in BlackFest across numerous projects and is now a proud member of our wonderful board of directors. Pari also writes and performs his own spoken word poetry independently and also has a passion for drama- influenced education and has worked with various theatre companies.
Humira was born and bred in Dewsbury, moved to the North East to study Applied Sciences & Forensic Investigation. Humira has always been a writer but first began sharing her writing for live performance at ARC Stockton on their scratch nights. Once they began this, Humira began to struggle to write as they did not know the industry well enough to be able to find the right actors for their stories, which were South Asian characters and South Asian stories. So Humira has been working hard to use their skills as an administrator to become a producer, venturing into directing as part of VAULT’s New Directors Programme. Humira’s writing focuses on South Asian voices/communities and the process of people working on their colonial and intergenerational trauma.
Kel Nkondock is a young Spanish actress, based in Liverpool with a passion for physical theatre and choreography. She’s trained with Cie Innocentia Inviolata, The Lucid Body and Tmesis Theatre (Physical Fest and Wicked Women Creative Development course). This year she became a member of the National Youth Theatre. She has worked as a dancer, actress and production assistant as well as performed for many independent art projects in both France and England. Most recently she played the part of Ursula in the short film Heirlooms and took part in BlackFest BLM soundscape and performed Hear Me Now monologues at BlackFest festival 2019 cohort.
