Booking and details
Dates Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 11am
Tickets Free; registration requested
Duration 2 hours
Can’t make it in person? This free event will be livestreamed via YouTube. Join us online
We look forward to celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday with this annual free and family-friendly event featuring music, contemporary poets Kenneth Carroll and Alexa Patrick, and actors Sara Barker, Louis E. Davis, Fatima Quander, Greg Alverez Reid reading historic speeches from Dr. King and others.
Stream the program live
Not Just Another Day Off was created in 2008. Previous readers include Jericho Brown, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Camonghne Felix, Melanie Henderson, DeMaris Hill, Julian Randall, Joseph Ross, Truth Thomas, and more.
You can also uplift our community by donating to the food pantries at our partner organizations:
Artists
Sara Barker
Sara Barker has performed in numerous DC-area productions and is a Producing Partner at Arlington’s Avant Bard Theatre and a company member at DC’s Rorschach Theatre. Select credits include: Avant Bard: Suddenly Last Summer (Catherine), Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight (Emilie), King Lear (Edgar), Othello (Desdemona), Orlando (Orlando), and Mary Stuart (Elizabeth); Rorschach: A Maze (Oksana), This Storm is What We Call Progress (Lily), and The Gallerist (Vanessa); Factory 449: 4.48 Psychosis and Closetland; Faction of Fools: The Cherry Orchard (Madame Ranevsky); Scena Theatre: A Woman of No Importance (Mrs. Arbuthnot), The Importance of Being Earnest (Algernon). NYC credits include The Brick’s King Lear (King Lear), Hipgnosis Theatre’s The Winter’s Tale (Paulina), and various devised works with director Lear DeBessonet. In May 2024, Sara will play Liv in Avant Bard’s production of the new play, Homeless Garden – a modern deconstruction of The Cherry Orchard, written by Matt Minnicino and co-developed by Refracted Theatre Company’s Graham Miller. www.sarabarker.com
Louis E. Davis
Louis E. Davis was born and raised in Baltimore, MD. He graduated with a BFA from Howard University’s Department of Theatre Arts. Previous credits include Monumental Travesties (Chance) and Bars & Measures (Bilal) at Mosaic Theater Company; Dance Nation (Luke) at Olney Theatre Center; Topdog/Underdog (Booth; 2020 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play) at WSC Avant Bard; Word Becomes Flesh (Ensemble) and Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea (Robby) at Theater Alliance; The Merry Wives of Windsor (Host) and Second Shepard’s Play (Ensemble) at Folger Theatre; Charm (Donnie) at Mosaic Theater Company; The Frederick Douglass Project (Ensemble) at Solas Nua; The Freshest Snow Whyte (Pop Lock) at Imagination Stage. TV work includes We Own This City for HBO. Find him on social media at @thekid_kinglou (Instagram).
Alexa Patrick
Alexa Patrick (she/her) is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, (dire. Bill T. Jones). You may find her work in publications including Adroit, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Visit alexapatrick.com for more.
Fatima Quander
Fatima Quander is a Lecturer of Acting for Live Digital Performance in UMD’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS). She recently directed A Bicycle Country by Nilo Cruz and The Book Club Play by Karen Zacarías both as TDPS. Other performing and directing credits include: FRESHH Inc. Theatre Company, DC Hip Hop Theatre Festival, Rep Stage, Everyman Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage Education, Theater of the First Amendment, Folger Elizabethan Theatre, Imagination Stage, Discovery Theater, Transformation Theatre, and Howard Community College; she has also performed in house and on tour with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Fatima also works as a theatre educator with a number of programs throughout the DC area including FRESHH Inc.’s Griot Girls and The Vanguard, Everyman Theatre, Poetry Out Loud, Folger Shakespeare Library’s McKee Fellows and Secondary School Shakespeare Festival, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, Sitar Arts Center, Jr. Discovery at Georgetown University, and Young Playwrights’ Theater. She is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).
Greg Alverez Reid
Greg Alverez Reid is an actor, producer and voiceover artist most recently appearing in the Pulitzer Prize winning Fat Ham at Studio Theatre. He can also be seen in the Hulu series Wu-Tang: An American Saga and the HBO/HBO Max film Between The World and Me. His audio work includes the current rom-com series Un-Lesh For Love and Brokedown Prophets both on Audible. Other credits include Sweat (Northern Stage), Blues for an Alabama Sky (CTG – Mark Taper Forum), The Bluest Eye (The Huntington Theatre), Detroit ’67 (Signature Theatre), Fences (McCarter Theatre Center), All My Sons (People’s Light Theatre), Broke-ology (Theater Alliance), Gem of The Ocean (Hangar Theatre), Seven Guitars (Studio Theatre) and renowned arts centers like The Apollo Theater and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in his native Washington, DC. He is a graduate of Howard University and the British American Dramatic Academy at Oxford.
Kenneth Carroll
Kenny Carroll is a writer from DC. He was the 2017 DC Youth Poet Laureate, and in 2019 received the Thomas Lux Scholarship from Sarah Lawrence. His work has been featured in Split This Rock’s The Quarry, EcoTheo Review, Lamplack, and Poetry London among others. He is a Watering Hole, Brooklyn Poets, and Obsidian fellow. And was selected by Roger Reeves as a 2023 Cave Canem Starshine and Clay fellow. @Kennyc113.