Playwrights Horizons presents Dave Harris’ Freedom Freedom Freedom Et Cetera, directed by Taylor Reynolds—the latest episode of Soundstage, the organization’s celebrated anthological scripted fiction podcast featuring “world premieres from world-class playwrights” (The New York Times). In Freedom Freedom Freedom Et Cetera, a dark comedy about ancestors and artists, a Black Broadway playwright, a spoken word poet, a Columbia professor, and an activist try to define Freedom in the year ???? In this convening of “four of the foremost Black thought-leaders of our time” for an episode of the radio show/TV program /podcast “The Word,” the friction of disparate ideologies and sensibilities erodes the formalities—and potentially, the reality—of a roundtable discussion…that may have been happening throughout time. In Harris and Reynolds’ humorous and unnerving creation, a familiar format collapses as it unleashes the American past and present, historic and personal on each other.
Freedom Freedom Freedom Et Cetera’s cast includes Yonatan Gebeyehu as Jake Dillers/Sponsors/Announcer, Brittany Bradford as LaToya Beasley, Beethoven Oden as Jerome Barker Thomas, Jerome Preston Bates as Walter Mixon Riley, and Dave Harris as Jones Joseph. Ben Scheff is the sound designer, Dylan Carrow is the sound editor, and Hanako Rodriguez is the production stage manager. Listen to a preview of the episode here.
Harris’ new work reunites the playwright with director Taylor Reynolds—who staged the world premiere of his shape-shifting satire Tambo & Bones, a co-production by Playwrights Horizons and Center Theatre Group, in 2022—and continues his ongoing relationship with the organization. Harris recently participated in Playwrights’ gala, which engaged writers in spontaneous acts of creation (the short play he wrote in an hour-and-a-half, called The Thick Place, was the gala’s finale), and is a contributor to the upcoming volume of the organization’s literary magazine, Almanac. Freedom Freedom Freedom Et Cetera’s release is part of a major year for the writer, whose play Incendiary has its world premiere at Woolly Mammoth this summer, while Tambo & Bones continues to reach new audiences with its upcoming UK premiere at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. Reynolds, meanwhile, recently won an Obie award for her direction of the Playwrights production of Tambo & Bones and the Page 73 production of John J. Caswell, Jr.’s Man Cave.
With plays written specifically for the audio format, not translated or recorded live from the stage, Soundstage has, since its debut season in 2020, established itself as a singular, adventurous presence “push[ing] the acoustic envelope” (The New York Times) in both the podcasting and theater worlds. Acclaimed actors and award-winning directors, sound designers, and composers realize rich and groundbreaking audio experiences in episodes 15-40 minutes in length. Episodes are available for free to listeners on all major podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher.
Development for Soundstage began prior to the pandemic, but the program’s launch was accelerated (it premiered in April 2020) to serve and expand the Playwrights Horizons audience in the era of social distancing. IndieWire named the first-ever episode, Heather Christian’s Prime: A Practical Breviary, “the best podcast episode of the year so far,” and Helen Shaw of New York Magazine called it “exquisite.” In 2021, Soundstage presented the six-part audio play The MS Phoenix Rising, which Elisabeth Vincentelli, writing for The New Yorker, deemed “among the funniest [productions] to emerge from the pandemic.”
Freedom Freedom Freedom Et Cetera is part of Soundstage’s second season, which has also featured Program B: Rapid Immersion by Sheila Callaghan, Last Words of Uncle Dirt by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, There’s No Time for Comedy & Loops by David Greenspan, His Chest Is Only Skeleton by Julia Izumi, The Marriage of Earth and Sky by Agnes Borinsky, and Vapor Trail by Ken Urban.
