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Hailing from the small town of Helena, Alabama, LaDarrion Williams is a self-taught playwright, filmmaker, author, and screenwriter who aims to cultivate a new era of Black fantasy. As a playwright, his plays have been a part of the Echo Theatre Playwrights Lab, the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. TSU’s Black and Latino Playwrights Festival, the Boise Contemporary Theater BIPOC Playwrights Festival, and an alum of the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. His play, Coco Queens, was invited to participate in the 2019 Sundance Institute’s Playwriting Intensive. It also won the New Works@theWorks Playwriting and was given a world premiere at the Playhouse on the Square in July 2024. His Jeff Award-nominated play Boulevard of Bold Dreams (a story about Hattie McDaniel’s historic Oscar win) was a part of the New Works Festival at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica, California. It had a world premiere production at the TimeLine Theatre Company in Chicago and an East Coast Premiere at Greater Boston Stage Company in March 2023. It was a part of the Orlando Shakes Theater Signature Series and was fully produced in October 2023. It will be produced at subsequent theatres nationwide in 2024-2025. In his filmmaking bag, LaDarrion has curated three short films on YouTube. As a debut author, his Young Adult Blood at the Root is a New York Times and USA Today Best Seller.
Representation
Stewart Talent
Amy Wagner
Contact:
Amy Wagner
Stewart Talent Literary Division
1430 BROADWAY SUITE 601
NEW YORK, NY, 10018
Plays
An historic night at the Oscars.
A dream of what could have been.
IT IS FEBRUARY 29, 1940, the night of the Academy Awards in Hollywood, California. Bartender Arthur Brooks, an ambitious Black man from rural Alabama, dreams of becoming a movie director. His best friend, Dottie Hudson, is a maid at the Ambassador Hotel who finds herself to be a cynic of all dreams. When the actress Hattie McDaniel stops in at the bar and decides not to attend the most significant event in show business, Arthur and Dottie do everything in their power to convince her to go and claim her historic win—while confronting their dark past and making their own dreams come to life.
This play is about race, class, gender, and the ever-changing landscape of Hollywood.
In the heart of Birmingham, Alabama, six courageous Black students who are desperate to be seen, heard, and protected set out to create their own co-ed fraternity for the neglected Black population on the predominately white college campus of McMillan University. But, when their efforts are sidelined by racial tension and a scandal, these young friends are forced to band together, challenge their moral compasses, and face their own dark secrets head-on.
An explosion of movement, music, and story, Broken Memories follows three teenagers struggling to find their voice in a world that ignores them. By weaving dance with poetry and the shocking stories of their lives, Broken Memories forces audiences to confront issues such as bullying, teen pregnancy, depression and suicide head-on.
Synopsis: In the sweltering and ripe bayou summer of 1920, bayou summer, Mama Jakes, a majestic black woman decides to start bootlegging whiskey with her young partner/ musician Willie Earl when the law of prohibition rains down, resulting in the closing of her prominent juke joint, Black Creek. This sets in motion a chain of life-changing events that greatly impact Mama Jakes and her entire family. Black Creek Risin' is a play about love... bootlegging... and the dark secrets hidden in the backwoods of Louisiana. A first of LaDarrion Williams' Black Creek Trilogy.
"Tyrell James is one of those hard-headed kids who ain't got no business doing what he's doing. He’s into the gang life on the harsh streets of Memphis, Tennessee. Skipping out on his responsibilities, and he's on the verge of losing himself. For him, this is the only way to survive. Before he screws up his life even further and continues down the wrong path, he is mysteriously summoned to an 1800s antebellum plantation. There he is forced into learning the hardships of slavery, past mistakes, and valuable life lessons that will set him back on the right path that he was destined for all along."
Reunited for their high school reunion, childhood friends Marcel and Brandon confront the old wounds and buried secrets that led to their present estrangement. A tenderhearted coming-of-age that embraces the art of Black masculinity.