The Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights (AFPP) was founded 21 years ago to promote and celebrate the stories and writers of the Appalachian region.  Over the past two decades, AFPP participants have helped us to develop dozens of new plays, many of which have gone on to full productions on our stages. 

This year we look a little different as the pandemic has made it necessary for our festival to be fully virtual but your participation in the play development process remains as important as ever. I’m extremely excited about the four new plays we’re reading this year by four playwrights who are new to our festival.  They are unique, challenging, thought-provoking plays, read by our fantastic resident acting company, and I look forward to the discussions they will spark!

I’m also tremendously excited about our brand new Black In Appalachia initiative we’re premiering this year.  In an effort to give voice to the more diverse stories of our region, we are committing to reading at least one new play written by a Black Appalachian playwright at each AFPP going forward.  This year’s selection is City Limits, by Quinton Cockrell.  We intend this to be the first step in making sure that all Appalachians are represented on our stages.

New plays, writing workshops, live panel discussions—there’s a lot going on for the two weeks of the festival.  Please take a look at the events itinerary on this page so you can see all that’s being offered this year.  I do hope you’ll join us for the live panel discussions, as it is your feedback that is most valuable to the playwrights as they develop their plays.

I want to thank you for joining us for the festival, for your continued support of Barter as we make our way through these challenging times, and most of all, for being a part of the process!

Mountain Mamas by Daryl Lisa Fazio

Patsy Armstrong is a coal miner. Just like her daddy, Earl. And just like her mother, Wanda, who was one of the first women ever hired underground in a union mine and, at 60 years old, is still there. As of this week, Patsy’s back in her mother and daddy’s house, after a mining accident that left her with no ability to move or communicate. Her bright 18-year old daughter, Livvy, now lives there too. In a home that’s full of humor and generosity and rowdiness and grit. But a home—not to mention a whole dang planet—that’s under more pressure than maybe it’s ever been. When the family gets news about the settlement from Patsy’s accident, Livvy jumps into the fray. And Patsy, now forced to listen and observe more than she ever did as a healthy person, is plagued by nightmares and revelations she’s able to share only with us. It doesn’t take long for her to realize she has to learn a new way of being if she’s gonna save her entire world.

PATSY
HANNAH INGRAM*

WANDA
TRICIA MATTHEWS*

LIVVY
ZOE VELLING

EARL
MICHAEL POISSON*

TV NEWS
MARY LUCY BIVINS*

DIRECTOR
BARRETT GUYTON

Daryl Lisa Fazio is a playwright, actor, and theatre graphic designer based in Atlanta, Georgia. Off-Broadway: POPart: The Musical (New York Musical Theatre Festival); Greyhounds (American Theatre of Actors & Theatre Row). Regional: Safety Net, Theatrical Outfit and Penobscot Theatre productions, Alliance Theatre Reiser Artists Lab winner, O’Neill finalist; The Flower Room, Actor’s Express world premiere; Split in Three, Aurora Theatre, Florida Rep world premiere; Freed Spirits, Horizon Theatre commission and world premiere. Her musical, lift (with composer Aaron McAllister), was chosen for the NAMT Festival of New Musicals in New York City, as well as being developed at the York Theatre and Coastal Carolina University. BA Theatre: Northwestern University. MFA Graphic Design: University of Memphis. Daryl hails originally from Mississippi, and her commitment is to writing complex and challenging roles for women of all ages, races, and classes, often with a focus on the Deep South. 

Tomorrow Game by Brandy N. Carie

 Bell and Roe live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that is so far gone they don’t even remember a time when there were grocery stores, safe drinking water, or 911. They each live in isolation, until they happen to meet. Bell shows Roe a game: take off your mask and see if you can breathe. Try this vegetable, and see if you wake up. Do more than just not-die. Bell may also have ulterior motives. Roe’s shelter is stocked with years worth of canned goods and other priceless resources. Is their friendship true–or just another game?

ROE
PARIS BRADSTREET*

BELL
KIM MORGAN DEAN*

DIRECTOR
NICHOLAS PIPER

Brandy N. Carie is a playwright, screenwriter, and stage director who writes about women, werewolves (and other canines), whiskey, pirates, and doomsday preppers. Carie was a winner of the SLOAN/CMU Screenwriting Competition, the Kennedy Center National Student Playwritng Award, and a finalist for the Princess Grace award. She has received residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the National Winter Playwrights Retreat. Her plays have been developed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Pittsburgh’s City Theatre, Mildred's Umbrella Theatre, the Kennedy Center, and Northlight Theatre, and produced by Houston's Collective 48, Blunt Objects Theatre, and Everyday Inferno Theater. Her immersive storage container mini-opera was produced by the Off-Book Club with Bricolage Production Company. Directing credits include the world premiere of Languagemachine by Lauren D’Errico and the Shakespeare parody audio play MacBADth for the pilot episode of the ICKIpedia podcast. Carie is currently developing a seven-play Bunker Cycle about American survivalists and doomsday preppers. She also runs a feminist horror film review site, Brutal 'N Scary with Brandy N. Carie, at brutalnscary.com. Carnegie Mellon Dramatic Writing MFA 2020. Find her at brandyncarie.com.

City Limits by Quinton Cockrell

In Apex, Alabama, a black woman and a white man, working together at the country’s largest retail chain form a bond that intensifies into a passionate and dangerous relationship.  City Limits touches on racial disparity, mental illness, and the soul’s desperate desire for freedom.

JACINTA
ALEAH VASSELL*

WAYNE LEE
JUSTIN TYLER LEWIS*

DIRECTOR
PATRICE FOSTER

EDI FACILITATOR
GEOVONDAY JONES

Quinton Cockrell is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. He received a BFA from
Birmingham-Southern College and an MFA from The Alabama Shakespeare
Festival's Professional Actor Training Program. He has worked with numerous theatre companies throughout the United States, including Riverside
Shakespeare Company, Westbeth Theatre, Soho Rep, The John Houseman
Theatre, Playwright's Horizons, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Studio Arena
Theatre, Heritage Repertory Company, Birmingham Children's Theatre, and City Equity Theatre. Quinton is a recipient of the Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship in playwriting for his plays Low Life and Shot House (which premiered in Paris at L’Ogresse Theatre in July 2007.) His play Chaos Is Come Again was selected as a finalist in Oregon Shakespeare’s Ashland New Play Festival in 2018. In 2009, he joined the Troy University Department of Theatre and Dance. He is a five-time recipient of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Meritorious Achievement Award for Excellence in Directing.

If God Came a Callin by Madison Fiedler

In a mountain town split into remnants of Appalachia’s past and glimmers of its future, a lottery is announced. Ticket rates: standard. The prize: the chance to speak with God. The devout think it's sacrilege and the skeptics are sure it's a hoax and no one's certain exactly what God needs money for, but in the chance that there's truth to it, who'd say no to a miracle? A magical-realist new play with the music of church and shaky violins and family dinners, If God Came a Callin dives into the holy and the familial and all the restless in-between.

FRANK
ANDREW LIVINGSTON*

NANCY
ASHLEY CAMPOS*

HARPER LOUISE
LIBBY ZABIT

SALLY
LUCY PIPER

JUNIOR
JOSIAH GROSS

ANA
KATHERINE  LYLE*

ZEKE
ZACCHAEUS KIMBRELL*

KEMP
SEAN CAMPOS*

OFFICIAL/PREACHER
TERRANCE JACKSON 

DIRECTOR
SUSANNE BOULLE

Madison Fiedler is a playwright from Asheville, North Carolina. Plays include Spay (2020 Kilroys List, delayed 2020 world premiere at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, Florida Rep PlayLab 2020, 2019 National Showcase of New Plays, 2018-2019 BoHo Theatre commission), The Incubators (Athena Project semi-finalist), Exalted (New York Theater Festival, IRT Theater, Vertigo Productions), and I Talk to the Flowers (Skidmore College, University of Kentucky), among others. She is a National New Play Network Affiliated Artist and a 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference Playwriting Scholar. BA: Northwestern University (2019). She currently lives in Brooklyn.