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Free Play: Open Source Scripts
Toward an Antiracist Tomorrow

Award-winning playwright, poet, changemaker, and recently appointed director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College Idris Goodwin offers five short plays for multi-generational audiences to spark conversation about race in America.

Download the plays:

  • The Water Gun Song
    (for audiences age 6 and up)A parent tries to find the words to explain to a child why a water gun isn’t simply a toy
  • Act Free
    (for audiences age 9 and up) Three kids wrestle with the definition of freedom
  • Nothing Rhymes with Juneteenth
    (for audiences age 9 and up) A child and a parent try to complete a rap for a school presentation
  • #MATTER
    (for audiences 14 and up) Former high school friends debate matters of life and race.
    View the short film version.
  • Black Flag
    (for audiences 14 and up) Two new dorm-mates are excited to start their freshman year together until one decides to decorate their room with a little piece of ‘Southern pride.’
    View the short film version.

To learn more about the Free Play project, visit the Theatre for Young Audiences website.

For Educators & Parents

In alignment to Colorado College’s Antiracism Initiative, these plays are shared as an approach for audiences to step into an active role towards antiracism.

Ways to utilize the plays:

  • Read the plays on your own and consider connections to your own experiences.
  • Perform these plays with your family and/or friends to engage in conversations about race, racism, and antiracism.
  • Work with students in your classes to perform these plays and facilitate discussion.
  • Share these plays on social media to generate conversations with your virtual communities.

Questions to consider before, during, and after the experience

  • Based on your own experiences, in what ways does racism occur in your life and communities
  • People inhabit many roles in society (e.g., family, schools, workplaces, communities). What are your roles in real life? How does your role in the play compare with your own experiences?
  • Through your engagement with this play, what further reflections or questions about racism come up? Why is antiracism work important for yourself and others?

Antiracism work is difficult work. Antiracism work may challenge you, make you feel uncomfortable, make you question your interactions with others, and more. That’s OK. We encourage you to continue your learning with discomfort. Antiracist work requires that we be vulnerable to our own implicit and explicit biases as we promote and educate for antiracism in our lives and communities.