DEPENDENCE - Stage Play Reading

You’re Invited: New Works Stage Reading
DEPENDENCE

Join us for a developmental staged reading of DEPENDENCE, a brand-new Fourth of July play written and directed by Dr. Austin Dean Ashford as part of The American Calendar Cycle.

On the Fourth of July, Erica and Brian meet in the half-packed remains of their marriage to divide belongings, sign divorce papers, and survive one final night inside the “country” they built together. As fireworks crackle outside, old arguments, buried grief, betrayal, memory, and questions of freedom begin to surface. What starts as a breakup turns into a sharp, funny, and emotionally charged reckoning about love, identity, change, and what it means to let go of someone who still lives inside your heart.

Blending humor, poetic language, relationship drama, and Afrofuturist imagination, DEPENDENCE explores the space between commitment and self-liberation. Through memory glitches, emotional archives, political metaphor, and the strange technology of a SMART BOX that stores more than just belongings, the play asks: What does independence really mean when love, history, and unfinished conversations still remain?

This is a full staged reading — a live workshop performance where the script is still being shaped. Your presence matters: your laughter, your reactions, and your feedback help strengthen the next draft.

What to Expect
• Full staged reading
• Run time: approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes
• Brief talkback with the cast + creative team following the reading
• Drinks + light refreshments available (arrive early or right on time)

If you love bold new theatre, poetic relationship stories, Black dramatic writing, emotional realism mixed with theatrical imagination, and work that holds both humor and heartbreak at once — this night is for you.