WORKS
American Calendar Cycle
Twelve original Afrofuturist ensemble plays aligned with the American year. Each work moves through a civic or seasonal moment via Black life, ritual, memory, humor, music, labor, family, faith, freedom, and nationhood.
The Cycle is also a public reading and dialogue series, developed through Stage Academy in Indianapolis. Each staged reading opens into a live community conversation, turning new play development into a shared civic and cultural event. What began as intimate gatherings at Flanner House has grown into a recurring platform rooted in performance, literacy, and Black community engagement. Readings now take place at spaces like Ujamaa Community Bookstore, where theatre, books, and cultural gathering converge.
12 staged readings completed. 500 participants engaged. 40 artists paid.
Available for production, adaptation, and partnership inquiries.
Solo Cycle
Solo Cycle is Dr. Austin Dean Ashford's evolving body of one-person plays, hip hop theatre works, solo musicals, and monodramas. In his hands, the solo form becomes archive, classroom, concert, sermon, cypher, and ceremony.
Rooted in hip hop, Black cultural memory, comedy, testimony, folklore, education, and embodied scholarship, Ashford's solo work stretches monodrama beyond confession or autobiography. One performer. An entire theatrical world.
Produced and acclaimed works
(I)sland T(rap) and Black Book have toured and received critical recognition, establishing Ashford as one of the form's distinctive voices.
In development
Blackting for the Magical Negro, Pinocchi'Andre, Beauty and the Beat, Library Play, Rap Monologues, Niggas in Space and Book Me continue to grow through staged readings, workshops, and developmental presentations nationally.
Available for production, touring, and adaptation inquiries.
Music
Upcoming Releases
No Budget Vol. 1 & 2 — mixtapes, Summer-Fall 2026
Paid Time Off — album, Summer 2027
Catalog
Boujetto (2023)
Durags n Bonnets (2022)
Sophisti-Rachet (2021)
Tours
Game Night (2023)
FOMO (2021)
Sophisti-Rachet (2021)
Live at the Lilypad (2021) streaming on Amazon Prime Video
SCREEN
Black Bones (2019) - short film
Premiered at Pan African Film & Arts Festival, Los Angeles. Writer/Actor.
Non-Prophet (current) - mockumentary television series
Season 1 complete. Creator/Director.
Available for production inquiries.
EVENTS
Bar Exams is the latest evolution of Dr. Austin Dean Ashford's hip hop theater practice, growing out of his touring workshop format Game Night. Part cypher, part trial, part live show.
Launched at First Fridays at Flanner House in Indianapolis, the series invites performers and audiences to gather around bars, arguments, and the live thinking power of hip hop. Performers defend lyrics, embody arguments as characters, perform rap bars as monologues, and use wit, rhetoric, and stage presence to move the room.
Rooted in two decades of monodrama and hip hop pedagogy, the format is available for touring, licensing, and institutional partnership.
EDUCATION
Standing Solo: Monodrama Intensive
A writing and performance workshop for creating one-person shows, led by award-winning playwright, solo performer, and monodrama scholar.
Standing Solo is the latest iteration of a teaching practice built and refined across more than two decades through Lyrical Therapy University, Stage Academy, the Flanner Fringe Lab, and 3Pack Music Lab. Grounded in Ashford's academic scholarship on monodrama and embodied storytelling, it translates rigorous research into hands-on creative process.
Built from his Standing Solo workbook, the intensive helps artists, students, educators, storytellers, and community members shape their own one-person shows from memory, identity, rhythm, character, testimony, and imagination. Participants leave with the foundation of an original solo piece, wherever they are in the creative process.
Available as a single workshop, one-day intensive, multi-day residency, classroom visit, or performance-and-workshop package for colleges, universities, theaters, festivals, and community organizations.