Three new plays exploring Black experiences and identity got their first public readings at Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre's third annual Gloria Bond Clunie Playwright's Festival on Saturday, July 18, and Sunday, July 19, at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center.
The weekend featured a short play, a one-act, and a full-length script, each followed by talkbacks where audience members could respond directly to the playwrights. Before rehearsals began, each playwright met one-on-one with Clunie herself, who walked them through the profession's nuts and bolts and offered career advice, according to the Daily Northwestern.
"When we have an administration that is trying to take away stories of all kinds — BIPOC stories, women's stories — I mean, literally taking them down from museums, that's the whole idea of making sure that we are responsible for keeping our stories alive," Clunie told the Daily Northwestern. "Because they can disappear."
The three plays
Saturday's first reading was "Black Enough," a short play by Beckett Thompson and directed by Lip Lewis. Several actors dramatize the playwright's internal monologue, exploring the challenges of creative production for Black artists. Thompson told the Daily Northwestern the piece grew out of self-doubt: after seeing the festival's prompt about the Black experience, Thompson kept thinking, "I don't think I'm Black enough for this story," and decided to write about that struggle instead.
Saturday evening brought "Visitation," a one-act by Caitlin Frazier that originated as a college assignment. Set in Frazier's hometown of Aurora, Colorado, it follows a housewife and her domineering husband who frequently break the fourth wall as they grapple with the arrival of a Black woman who sits on the housewife's prized "green patch."
Sunday's reading was "Miss Spence's Play," a full-length historical drama by Annie Janeiro Randall, a historian who teaches at DePaul University and the University of Chicago. Set in the editorial office of the NAACP's The Crisis magazine during the Harlem Renaissance, the play follows playwright Eulalie Spence working alongside W.E.B. Du Bois' Krigwa Players, chronicling disagreements between Spence and Du Bois on the purpose of Black theater.
A festival rooted in Evanston history
Clunie, a Northwestern University alumna, founded what is now Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre in 1979 after calling Evanston community centers looking for a place to direct. The theater, originally named Foster Community Theatre, has spent more than four decades centering African American and African diaspora storytelling at 927 Noyes St.
Clunie has spoken about the theater's origins before. At a November 2025 panel hosted by the Evanston History Center, she said: "I didn't set out to be an artistic director. I wanted to direct. But I also knew that our stories were important. Black stories were important, and they weren't being told."
The festival was established by current artistic director Tim Rhoze and produced this year by Eileen Tull and Taria Abram. Tull told the Daily Northwestern she sees the post-reading talkbacks as essential, describing audience members as "collaborators" in shaping new work.
Fleetwood-Jourdain's next production, "In the Continuum" by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, opens Saturday, July 25, with performances Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. through August 9.
