Black Friends

An Irons in the Fire Project

December 5, 2025 @ 6:00pm
Theatre Row, Studio Theatre

By Erica Jensen
Directed by Miranda Haymon

Synopsis

Jessica was raised by white people. All of her friends are white. Everyone she works with is white. Jessica is Black. It’s 2022 at the height of DEI and Jessica is suddenly aware of how alone she is. She does what any reasonable identity-questioning lonely Black woman would do – she rents a Black Friend.

Playwright

ERICA JENSEN (she/her) From an early age, Erica Jensen loved to write. Her story, THE HUGE EGG, won first place in her second-grade classroom’s writing competition. Since then, she’s written plays, TV pilots, musicals, and poetry. With her writing partners she co-wrote Living in Captivity, a TV show about zookeepers at the Central Park Zoo. Living in Captivity was shown at the Los Angeles International Television Festival. She also co-wrote a musical, Mother Eve’s Secret Garden of Sensual Sisterhood, which had a run at the NYC Fringe Festival and attracted two Tony- nominated producers to option it. Currently, Erica is working on a play titled Black Friends about a Black woman’s search for connection to a culture she feels outside of. With her partners James Calleri and Paul Davis, Erica is a casting director with Calleri Jensen Davis; she’s on the Executive Board of The Make Good Project; and she’s co-owner of She-Collective, which is a space for female-identifying artists to take classes in acting and writing. Erica lives in Brooklyn, NY and is an anxious mom of a teenager.

Director

MIRANDA HAYMON (they/them) Miranda Haymon is a Princess Grace Award winning director and writer originally from Boston. As a theater director, Miranda has developed and staged work with The Tank, NYTW, Roundabout, Ars Nova, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Public, Bushwick Starr, Signature Theater and more. Miranda has served as Visiting Faculty at Fordham, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, Wesleyan, Rutgers and Harvard. Past fellowships/residencies include New Georges, Space on Ryder Farm, LCT Director’s Lab, Wingspace, NYTW 2050, Roundabout, Manhattan Theatre Club and Arena Stage. Currently, Miranda is a Resident Director at Roundabout Theatre Company.

Miranda’s short film Sis has played at over a dozen film festivals worldwide. Highlights include its world premiere at The Taormina Film Festival in Bella Thorne’s Influential Shorts program, US premiere at Outfest and at NewFest where Miranda was an Emerging Black LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Award Recipient, with the jury calling the film “a love letter to the ever so familiar queer moment of spontaneity and chance, the Black Queer “YOLO” we’ve been waiting for”. Sis was curated in the 2024 Whitney Biennial where the curators noted “Like Brecht but centering the viewpoints of queer Black women, Haymon highlights the incongruities of staged situations and, by extension, the absurdities of how social reality is constructed.” Limited edition merch for Sis can be purchased at The Whitney Shop.

In the brand sphere, Miranda has directed commercials with e.l.f, Progressive, Gucci, Garage Magazine, Dunkin’ and Spectrum. As a writer, Miranda most recently wrote Dylan Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Girlhood Live!” from the Rainbow Room. You can also find Miranda collaborating with their alter ego, bb brecht. Miranda is a graduate of Wesleyan University where they double majored in German Studies and Theater and were awarded the Rachel Henderson Theater Prize in Directing.

Poster Sketch by Sean Devare