Synopsis: Written by Reggie D. White and directed by Lili-Anne Brown, Fremont Ave. is a raw, electric world premiere that moves across decades with the force of memory and the rhythm of Spades. From young love and big dreams to buried resentment and unmet expectations, three generations of Black men face off at the card table and come face-to-face with each other. At the center of it all is the family’s formidable matriarch: beloved, feared, and never forgotten. What begins as a game becomes a reckoning with masculinity, identity, and the weight of silence passed down. Fremont Ave. lays every card on the table and dares you to do the same.
Artistic Statement: Reggie D. White’s Fremont Ave. exemplifies the kind of layered, courageous storytelling that defines Arena's commitment to new work. The play places us inside the beating heart of an African American family across three generations, as they wrestle with lifetimes of hopes and dreams deferred. What began as conversations with his own elders has grown into a world premiere that is as tender as it is unflinching, as vulnerable as it is hilarious.Within the Plique family, we see George, his stepson Robert, and his grandson Joseph volley between silence and confession, pride and shame, anger and love. Their words crack like pinballs, ricocheting through decades of change—1968, the 1990s, to today—constantly interrogating what it means to be a man, a father, a son, and sometimes a stranger in your own house. A love letter to Black men, Fremont Ave. has particular and powerful resonance in Washington, DC, where resilience is stitched into the fabric of our communities. This story - a story as laugh-out-loud funny as it is deeply, sometimes painfully true - reminds us where we are, reflects on where we've been, and gestures toward where we're going, offering a depiction of buoyant, complex, fully embodied men, whose humor and vulnerability are revolutionary acts.