The African American experience is not represented solely by one voice or one style. For the third year in a row Horse Trade Theater Group will present The Fire This Time Festival, providing a platform for talented early-career playwrights of African and African-American descent to explore new voices, styles, and challenging new directions for 21st century performing arts in order to move beyond common misconceptions of what's possible in black theater. The festival's core production is a short play festival, presenting new work by featured playwrights. Other festival programming includes panel discussions, staged readings, and concert events.