THEATRE: Summer Diaries of a Black Brooklyn Lesbian

About

A live reading and workshop of Summer Diaries of a Black Brooklyn Lesbian. Part of The House Theatre Company’s The Greenhouse reading series Calling all writers & smart theatre thinkers! The Greenhouse is The House Theatre Company’s reading series focused on constructive feedback & development for new plays and musicals. Each reading is followed by a circle focused on developing the work, so come to Summer Diaries of a Black Brooklyn Lesbian prepped with your notepads & excited to develop art in community! We’d love to see you there. Summer Diaries of a Black Brooklyn Lesbian tells the story of 21-year-old girl named Niah, who is learning to navigate her world having just been cheated on by the girl she thought was the love of her life. Set up as her first diary entry, Niah recounts her first night out as a freshly single young woman. Thrown into the very vibrant and overwhelming nightlife of Bushwick, the audience is taken through Niah’s memories of raw confrontations and unexpected connections. Having to confront uncomfortable realities about her identity through a single transformative evening, Niah experiences the intersection of grief, desire, and community as she begins to understand that all roads lead back to self-love. This reading of Summer Diaries of a Black Brooklyn Lesbian will begin at 5:30pm, with a workshop and feedback session to follow. The House Theatre Co. is a new theatre collective dedicated to developing new work, launching the careers of emerging artists, and uplifting underrepresented voices in the theatre industry. Our programming represents a development model that guides artists through creating, developing, and producing new work in a collective space while elevating unheard voices in our community. Founded this year by Miranda Paiz and Sophie Simons, The House's work has been presented at performance venues and community spaces such as The Tank, the Dramatists Guild Foundation, The Rat, The Hudson Guild Theatre, and more. They are so excited to return to Hive Mind Books after their April 2026 Greenhouse reading of The Sun Also Rises! Shyteek McLeod (Playwright) is a dynamic actress, playwright, and award-winning scholar dedicated to bold, transformative storytelling across stage and screen. A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) with a BFA in Acting through the Posse Foundation, she is known for her commanding performances in classical and contemporary works including The Amen Corner, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Half God of Rainfall, A Winter’s Tale, and Measure for Measure. Her screen work includes leading roles in the independent films The Holy F*ck, Runaway Getaway, and Between The Cracks. As a Posse Scholar and Lin-Manuel Miranda Fellow, she continues to merge artistry with advocacy, leadership, and academic excellence. In addition to performing, Shyteek is passionate about developing new work, arts leadership, and creating spaces that amplify underrepresented voices. She remains committed to storytelling that bridges myth and realism, challenges audiences, and centers cultural truth. Charlique C. Rolle (Director) is an experimental multidisciplinary storyteller, cultural conservationist, community + cultural design specialist, and a human who exists in the world to love recklessly, build faithfully, and create fearlessly. A native of The Bahamas, she draws on the wisdom, ritual, and embodied knowing of Black womanhood across the diaspora. Her work lives at the intersection of storytelling, spirituality, embodiment, ritual, memory, and collective liberation. Through theater, movement, music, poetry, immersive experience, and community-rooted practice, she creates spaces of remembrance, restoration, reimagination, and return. She is especially interested in storytelling as quilombo: spaces of refuge, resistance, joy, play, experimentation, and becoming. She is a recipient of the 2026 Drama League Irene Gandy Directing Assistantship and currently serves as co-founder and Executive Producer at Gilded Road Productions; Associate Producer, Resident Director, and Casting Director at PlayGround-NY; Assistant Director of the 10th Anniversary Broadway Revival of SCHOOL GIRLS; OR THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY among other works. Hive Mind Books is a queer and trans bookstore and coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We are located off of the Dekalb Ave (L), Myrtle-Wyckoff (L/M), and Knickerbocker (M) subway stations. Our coffee and tea bar will be open for the duration of this event.

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