By Kyle Bass
Directed by Vernice Miller
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To mark the fifth anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd, a diverse group of teens has creates a new religion around the martyr. As they try to come up with the last verse of the final chapter of their sacred text (Floydians 9:29), division, shifting alliances and the deeply personal threaten the group’s cohesion and tests their faith in the possibility of a just society and a hopeful future. This one-act play written for teenage performers is a meditation on martyrdom and the pursuit of justice.
The Floydians premiered in New York City as part of the Keen Company’s 2025 Keen Teens Festival of New Work at Theatre Row in May 2025 under the direction of Karl Michael Iglesias.
HartBeat’s Youth Play Institute (YPI), now in its 15th year, is a paid internship program in acting, playwriting, theater design or stage management for young adults between the ages of 16 and 21; a program where youth are developing and expressing their perspectives about social justice and engaging in their lives through a political lens.
Kyle Bass
Kyle Bass is a playwright, screenwriter and librettist whose work spans theatre, opera and film. His plays include The Floydians (Keen Company, off-Broadway), Toliver & Wakeman (Franklin Stage Company, Colgate University Theater), Tender Rain and Salt City Blues (Syracuse Stage), Possessing Harriet (Syracuse Stage, Franklin Stage Company, East Lynne Theater Company, HartBeat Ensemble; published by Theatrical Rights Worldwide) and Citizen James, or The Young Man Without a Country (Syracuse Stage, HartBeat Ensemble, national tour). His new plays include The Civilities, commissioned by Franklin Stage Company and premiering there this August, and The Black Nationals, commissioned by Syracuse Stage and set to premiere there in 2027.
In collaboration with National Medal of Arts recipient Ping Chong, Kyle co-authored Cry for Peace: Voices from the Congo (Syracuse Stage, La MaMa). He adapted the libretto for a new production of Treemonisha under commission of the Washington National Opera. His librettos also include Libba Cotten: Here This Day, commissioned by the Society for New Music. He also collaborated with MacArthur Fellow Carrie Mae Weems on Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, which premiered at the 2016 Spoleto Festival USA and was subsequently produced at Yale Rep and the Kennedy Center. Kyle co-authored the screenplay for the feature film Day of Days starring Tom Skerritt and is the screenwriter and executive producer of the forthcoming narrative short film Northeast.
A three-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, playwriting and screenwriting, Kyle is Resident Playwright at Syracuse Stage and Associate Professor of Theater at Colgate University, where he teaches playwriting, screenwriting and contemporary African American dramatic literatures. A descendant of people once enslaved in colonial New England and the American South, Kyle lives and writes in upstate New York, where his family has lived freely and owned land for 227 years. Visit kylebassplaywright.com.
Running Time: 30 minutes
These performances are supported in part by the J. Walton Bissell Foundation, Department of Economic and Community Development, CT Office of the Arts, City of Hartford, CDBG and Travelers.
