Theater Professor Wins Prestigious Playwright Residency

Psalmayene 24 Honored with an Award Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

MEDIA CONTACT: Damita Chambers, dchambers@bowiestate.edu, 301-832-2628 mobile

(BOWIE, Md.) – A Bowie State University professor and playwright, whose work “illuminates the souls of black people,” was selected for a three-year residency at a local theater with the highly competitive National Playwright Residency Program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Psalmayene 24 will develop several new plays as a member of Mosaic’s artistic staff at the Mosaic Theater in Washington, DC, beginning in July 2020. At least one of his plays will be produced at the Mosaic within the next three years. Psalm will also participate in the theater’s community outreach programs and initiate a directors/playwrights cohort. During his residency, he will continue to serve as an artist-in-residence and theater lecturer in Bowie State’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts and use the opportunity to involve his students in his artistic projects.

“It’s a dream come true to get paid to just think and write. It is certainly one of the big dreams in my life and in my career,” he said. “It means that the national field is saying that I’m a writer whose voice the country needs to pay attention to and that my work is worthy of being supported for three years. I take pride in creating theater that illuminates the souls of black people, so I look at it as a great victory for the black community at large.” 

Psalm joins the third cohort of distinguished playwrights from around the country, selected for this honor. Since 2013, the National Playwright Residency Program has awarded three-year residencies to distinguished playwrights, funded by the Mellon Foundation in collaboration with the HowlRound Theatre Commons, an organization that supports progressive theater professionals. Past recipients include renowned author and playwright Pearl Cleage, whose first novel, “What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day,” landed on the New York Times bestseller list and the Oprah Book Club picks.

Psalm is a celebrated playwright, director and actor, who won a 2017 Helen Hayes Award for directing, “Word Becomes Flesh,” which uses hip-hop, dance and music to explore what it means to be a black man in the 21^st century. He was nominated for two Helen Hayes Awards for playwriting. In 2019, he got the nomination for “The Frederick Douglass Project,” a commemoration of the antislavery orator’s 1845 voyage to Ireland and bicentennial of his birth. This year, he received a Helen Hayes Award nod for “Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of a Native Son,” a reimagining of a confrontation between authors Richard Wright and James Baldwin, produced at the Mosaic Theater.

He is currently developing an autobiographical, one-man play, “Dear Mapel,” envisioned as a letter to his deceased father, who he hardly knew.

“It is a story that is emblematic of a lot of stories in the black community,” he said. “Unfortunately, because of the legacy of slavery, we have had a fractured family existence in this country, and one of the consequences is a frequent schism between fathers and their children. My hope is that by addressing it in my own personal life, I can shed some light on that phenomenon, not only in the black community, but in American culture at large. Ultimately, it’s a universal story about a parent and a child that we can all relate to in some way.”

A hip-hop theatrical portrait of the late former DC mayor, Marion Barry, known as “Mayor for Life,” is another project he plans to explore. “Freedom Strike,” is another proposed play, which tells the story of a black performance artist, who severs the head of President Abraham Lincoln from a controversial DC statue.

Before any of the projects are produced, there will be a public reading, where Bowie State students will be invited to join the local community in providing feedback on a near-final draft. Psalm plans to involve students in even more learning opportunities.

“I would love to find ways to open the behind-the-scenes process to students as well, as is appropriate,” he said. “I’m always looking out for ways to fold students into the mix.”

###

 
About Bowie State University
Bowie State University (BSU) is an important higher education access portal for qualified persons from diverse academic and socioeconomic backgrounds, seeking a high-quality and affordable public comprehensive university. The university places special emphasis on the science, technology, cybersecurity, teacher education, business, and nursing disciplines within the context of a liberal arts education. For more information about BSU, visit bowiestate.edu.