Hybrid Event: In-person and virtual participation availableFeatured Highlight:  Launch of the Drinking Gourd Virtual Learning Community-(Available online from March 22 – April 19, 2025)

A gathering of HBCU students and faculty featuring workshops, networking opportunities, and performances designed to support emerging theatre professionals in their artistic development.

Register here: In-Person Summit  Registration Virtual Registration  Hybrid Registration

“Mind the roots, heal the land.”

Wonder Wander City Park is an immersive audio experience and a land and labor acknowledgment in action through storytelling. This devised piece is being created in collaboration with the cast and production team, blending their talents and perspectives to honor the land and its history in a deeply meaningful way. Running April 4–13, 2025, this unique outdoor production explores the vast history of City Park—once a vital portage for Indigenous peoples, later home to plantations, a segregated park, and now a space of celebration and community gathering. Hundreds of years of stories inhabit this land, and Wonder Wander City Park brings them to life through a fusion of live performance and immersive audio, inviting audiences to “connect to the land on which we stand.”

This is history felt, seen, and heard—an experience like no other.

Wonder Wander City Park is brought to life by a dedicated group of creators, performers, and designers, all committed to sharing the rich history and stories of City Park in a way that invites audiences to connect with the land and its past.

Creative Team:  

Wonder Wander City Park features a talented cast including April Louise, Owen Ever, Juniper Cassaway, Lorrin Dabon, Caldrick Williams, and Matt Story, each bringing their unique energy to help bring the rich history of City Park to life. Conceived by Lisa Shattuck and co-directed by No Dream Deferred Artistic Director Lauren Turner Hines, the production is created in collaboration with Assistant Producer R'Myni Watson, Stage Manager Becka McLaughlin, Set Designer Jeff Becker, Sound Designer Steve Gilliland, and Costume Designer Renee Johnson. Together, this team is crafting an experience that honors the land’s past while celebrating its future.

Along with the talented cast and crew, Wonder Wander City Park also features the voices and stories of many community members, whose lived experiences are woven into the heart of the production.

This team is creating an experience that honors the past, celebrates the present, and invites us all to reflect on the future of City Park.

For more information about Wonder Wander City Park visit: https://wonderwandercitypark.mystrikingly.com/

Purchase tickets HERE!

Submit your work to the festival here! 

Submission deadline: February 21, 2025

Submission Guidelines

A showcase of bold new works by Afro-Latinx playwrights, weaving together narratives that bridge cultural and historical legacies.

The festival delegation of seven multi-disciplinary artists, will join international artists and practitioners to shape the future of Black storytelling worldwide for the next 100 years. As part of this journey, the Your Story, Your Power workshop will be facilitated by No Dream Deferred, at Wanda Academy in Elmina, Ghana, empowering young  artists to embrace storytelling as a tool for cultural preservation and global artistic dialogue.