Through A Different Myth, Different Strokes! and the American Myth Center are proud to foster emerging Black playwrights in the development and production of powerful new plays that entertain, inform, and enlighten audiences, and deepen their awareness of Black joy. A Different Myth offers playwrights a chance to develop their work with experienced mentors, directors, actors, and eventually an audience. We are extremely pleased to along with The American Myth Center, announce our 2022 Cohort of talented Playwrights!
MELVIN AC HOWELL is an internationally cultured choreographer and creative director currently living in Asheville, NC. Melvin has been transforming and molding lives, while evolving the art of dance, for over 13 years. His approach is his purpose, “Spread positivity, encouragement, and guidance through dance. The positivity movement.” Melvin AC Howell is currently 27 years old and travels the world teaching dance and performing. He currently teaches and offers lessons in Asheville. Melvin has recently taken his love for art and helping others to different art mediums including roller skating, digital art, painting, fashion, and writing! “I am doing what I love now, but it was only a year ago that, by sheer bad fortune, I had ended up homeless for the fourth time. I felt invisible, unpurposed, and irrelevant. I was 26, living on the streets, with nowhere to go when I realized I couldn’t allow myself to stay there because others needed my help. I made a vow that I would use my platform and my gifts to help others out of that same situation.” Melvin has since dedicated his first ever digital art brand (Tiny Home Big Movement) to ending homelessness in Asheville and His Fashion brand (Heart x Soul Apparel) to encouraging appreciation of your own beautiful uniqueness!
LISA LANGFORD is a Buffalo-born playwright based in Cleveland, OH. Her play Rastus and Hattie received a Joyce Award, a Kilroy’s List honorable mention, and was published by New Stage Press. Lisa’s other plays include How Blood Go, which was an August Wilson New Play Initiative reading series selection at Chicago’s Congo Square Theatre and part of Global Black Voices at the Roundhouse Theatre in London UK; The Art of Longing, a Leslie Scalapino Award finalist for Innovative Women Playwrights; and a short play, The Bomb, published in the anthology Black Lives/Black Words. Her most recent play, Breakfast at the Bookstore, won Pittsburgh Public Theatre’s 2022 New Play Contest.
In 2022, she won the Bradford Gromelski Jury Award from Fusion Theatre. In 2021, the L.B. Williams Award (New Circle Theatre) and in 2018-9 PLAY LA (Humanitas).
MILDRED INEZ LEWIS writes and directs for theater, film and the digital space. An associate Dramatists Guild member, she belongs to the Antaeus, Company of Angels, EST-Los Angeles, PlayGround-LA and Towne Street Theatre writing groups. She completed her education at Oberlin College and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Upcoming productions include SUITCASES with EST-Los Angeles and THE WOMENS ANNEX, inspired by THE COLORED MUSEUM AT Central Works (Berkeley, CA). Recent productions include GHOSTS OF BLACKNESS commissioned by the Harlem9, Lucille Lortel Foundation and National Black Theatre; MEETS PRINCE, LOVES FROG with the Feminist Fairytale podcast series; $10 AND A TAMBOURINE podcast with Antaeus Theatre (2021 Ambie nominee); WE JUMP BROOM with PlayGround-LA, Best of PlayGround-LA, Towne Street Theatre; WE DREAMED OURSELVES, Dragon Egg Productions (Oakland, CA); and THE PEACE OF HOME, The Road Theatre Summer Playwrights Festival.
Publications include WE JUMP BROOM with Fleas of the Dog magazine; THE GIFT and /KOM’PLISIT/ with Broadway Play Publishing. ROOST FIRST, THEN FLY in Applause Books’ 2020 10-Minute play collection.