The Atlanta Black Theatre Festival adds inaugural HBCU showcase to 2026 lineup 

An annual late summer event, the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival is a celebration of plays, films and readings from local and national playwrights. This year, for the first time, the Festival will showcase plays from four historically Black colleges: Hampton University, Morgan State University, Spelman College and Claflin University.

ABTF is making the change to give young thespians the chance to display their talents at the festival level during the school year, said Toni Simmons Henson, co-founder of the Festival, now in its 15th year.

“One of the things I’ve been consistently hearing over the last three years is, ‘You’re the only theater festival that’s targeting our community that happens during the school year,’” she said. “I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ And so, we came up with the HBCU Showcase.”

The move comes as the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, like many others, is rebuilding its audience after taking a substantial hit during the pandemic. About 5,500 people attended the Festival at its peak before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Now, about 1,500 to 2,000 people attend annually. 

This year may be different, Henson said. 

“This showcase has taken off, and the buzz is hot,” she said. “Ticket sales are up 65%.”

ABTF board member Keith Franklin is not surprised. The Festival will feature Golden Globe-winning playwright Regina Taylor performing the play Exhibit; Spelman College is bringing the play Single Black Female; and Morgan State will add music with a revue of Motown dubbed Echoes of Motown: A Musical Requiem of Rhythm & Resistance. 

In addition, there will be a monologue competition and an opening night networking event. All total, there will be 26 events mounted in three days, Henson said. 

“It’s an opportunity for emerging playwrights to get their works heard,” said Franklin, who added that the Festival is the kind of place where attendees can stumble into the reading of what could turn into the next Fences or Hamilton.

“It’s an opportunity for Black performers to get a national spotlight,” he said. “It’s also a chance for networking among Black producers, performers and actors.”

A number of short films also are set for the event, including When It Comes to You, This Sunday, Dignity and Ex-Slave’s Fortune. 

Playwright and ABTF Board Chairman Winston Wilson said the Festival is one of three places where he hosted a reading of his play, Lyrics. ABTF accepted the paean to hip-hop for a premier performance in 2024.

The readings allow playwrights to workshop ideas, get feedback and make changes if necessary, he said. 

“Playwrights and producers, especially those who are Black, struggle to find places where we feel comfortable or places that will actually even accept our work,” he continued. “We accept them in. We don’t say, ‘Oh, yeah, you have to make 1,000 criteria before you can have a reading before the ABTF.’”

Organizers of the Festival praised Spelman College for hosting this year’s event. Most of the activities will be held at the Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation & the Arts and the LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Samuel L. Jackson Performing Arts Center.

“It is an amazing turn of events for us,” Wilson said, adding that this is the second year for the Festival at Spelman. “They have accepted us like we’ve always been there. This has been an amazing step.”

Henson, who co-founded the Festival with her sister, Wanda Simmons, said a big appeal of the event is catching up with friends every year. 

“We need to love on folks,” she said. “We need people to come home.”

Franklin agreed. “The theater community is very much like a family,” he said. “We hunger for the moment to get together, to be around people we only see once a year. This is like a family reunion.”

Where and When

The Atlanta Black Theatre Festival is set for September 3 through September 5 at Spelman College’s Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation & the Arts and the LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Samuel L. Jackson Performing Arts Center. Ticket prices and events vary.
350 Spelman Lane, SW.

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Leon Stafford is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years of experience at various newspapers, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Knoxville News-Sentinel. He has covered municipal government, business, education, hospitality and the arts during his career.