EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of
Good Hair
written by Phaedra Michelle Scott
directed by Kimille Howard
featuring Arshia Panicker, Dolores Avery Pereira, Yvonne Jessica Pruitt, & Kedren Spencer
Told through three timelines, Good Hair tangles together the lives of women and the central question: Does the cost of beauty outweigh the proof of science?
Rachel E. Winfield, Stage Manager
This virtual reading will be held on the Zoom platform. You can make sure you have the latest version downloaded here.
Phaedra Michelle Scott is a playwright and dramaturg based in New York City. Her play, DIASPORA! was a commissioned work through SpeakEasy Stages’s The Boston Project. She is a past resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm for her play PLANTATION BLACK, and is currently a member of the OBIE award-winning playwriting ensemble, Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and Pipeline Theater Company’s PlayLab. Currently, she is developing her newest play GOOD HAIR, recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant. She has been an arts and culture journalist for wbur, Boston’s NPR station; a content developer at the USS Constitution Museum where she made maritime history accessible through storytelling and media. She is the resident dramaturg of New Harmony Project. Scott has received a Bly Creative Capacity Grant for her work as dramaturg for Black Theater Commons as well as the recipient of the Frederick Douglass Fellowship for her research on August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle. She is a crocheter, horror fan and obscure history enthusiast. She/Her/Hers. www.phaedrascott.com
Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!
Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.
Good Hair is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.
We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists, American Guild of Variety Artists, and SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the artists to appear on this program.