Last winter, I had the honor of performing in a recording of Aja Houston's pan-African fantasy play ACIRFA. It is now available for your listening pleasure!
The cast of ACIRFA is:
Shaun Bennet Fauntleroy as Aaliyah
Robert Lee Taylor as Osi
Lori Parquet as Amani
Yeauxlanda Kaye as Sarai
Anthony Wills Jr. as Jamal and The Judge
Geri-Nikole Love as Lesedi
Stage directions were read by Adriana Jones read stage directions
This episode was directed by Heather Cohn
From Jason Tseng, Play X Play's producer:
ACIRFA by Aja Houston is an epic and lyrical play set in a mythic Afro-fantasy world examining ideas of Blackness, colonialism, slavery, and legacy. Aja wrestles with the ramifications of the American slave trade and the stripping of culture, dignity, and history experienced by enslaved African people. But what excited me more than anything else was the fact that Aja chose to situate this theatrical question in a fantasy setting. The exclusion and marginalization of people of color from speculative fiction had been long documented. Genre fiction writers often employ aliens or fantasy races like elves and goblins to address issues of race through allegory, but it’s rare that people of color get to imagine ourselves in these fantastical settings, much less as subjects of those imaginings. So with great excitement, I am proud to present to you, ACIRFA.