Want a FREE sneak peek of three plays that the Black Arts & Cultural Center's Face Off Theatre Company will be staging next year?

Come out at 7 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 9 to the "New Play Series: Staged Readings" being held at First Baptist Church, located at 315 W. Michigan Ave. in downtown Kalamazoo, up the street from the Radisson Plaza Hotel. Tickets are not required.

We will be featuring pieces by three local African-American female playwrights that'll have you laughing one minute and contemplative the next, maybe even crying.

Here's the lineup:

• "Dreamin'" by Dr. Michelle Johnson: A comedic look at the lives of three women as they navigate careers, relationships and unexplored visions

• "A Ligature for Black Bodies" by Denise Miller: An attempt to confront the nation’s historical apathy through an elegiac chronicle of the indifferent, haphazard yet legal murder of Black people by the American values education taught not only to the criminal justice system, but to all of us

• "You're Gonna Learn Today" by Earlene McMichael: A journey of a teen girl whose "Black card" is questioned by her parents in a tale illuminating the intersection of class, race, cultural identity and activism