EXCLUSIVE: Marcus Callender, best known for starring in Power and Wu-Tang: An American Saga, is taking his Spades: The Play on a national tour.

The stage play is set to run 76 performances across Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami this fall, following a four-week debut run in Harlem last November.

“I consider Spades: The Play a love letter to us and to the culture. I spent ten years writing this play, with love, care and intention poured into every word,” the director and playwright says. “Taking it on tour and bringing it directly to the people is exactly what it was created for.”

He continued, “Great theater doesn’t have to exist within the walls of traditional confines — it comes from raw storytelling and relatable experiences that can live anywhere. I had the exciting opportunity to shape what theater looks and feels like for the culture, on our own terms and to me, that’s the future of theater.”

Set in 2013 Harlem, and based on true events in Callender’s life, Spades: The Play follows a close-knit group of twenty-somethings as they gather for their weekly spades game at a friend’s house. As the cards are dealt, playful banter turns to honest conversation about love, friendship, and the blurred lines between the two. The production stars Broderick Clavery (Extrapolations) as “Gill” and Akilah A. Walker (The Chi) as “Cori,” with Derrick Alexander as “Andre” and Erin Nicole Washington as “Nefertiti.”

The tour kicks off with an exclusive one-night-only performance at the historic Studio Museum in Harlem on September 3.

Each stop on the tour is hosted at a culturally centric venue. The run includes Culture House DC, a former Black church dating to the 1800s; Cam Kirk Studios in Atlanta; Wendy Raquel Robinson’s Amazing Grace Conservatory in Los Angeles; and Fire House Loft in New Orleans. It closes in Miami during Art Basel.

Spades: The Play Tour Dates

September 9-20: Washington, D.C. (Culture House DC)

September 23-October 18: Los Angeles, California (Amazing Grace Conservatory)

October 21-November 15: Atlanta, Georgia (Cam Kirk Studios)

November 18-29: New Orleans, Louisiana (Fire House Loft)

December 2-6: Miami, Florida

Tickets are available exclusively through Posh.

ABC is proposing a hearing as soon as Friday on its request for a temporary restraining order in its First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC, while the agency signaled that it plans to challenge the litigation as premature.

The plans were laid out on Thursday on in a joint status report from the parties, as requested by the federal judge in the case, Loren L. AliKhan.

The network sued the FCC on Tuesday, claiming that the agency’s order for an early renewal of its eight station broadcast licenses was highly unusual and part of a pattern of using regulatory threat to retaliate on content and news coverage the Trump administration disfavors. In the immediate term, they are asking for a temporary restraining order to halt the renewal proceedings, characterizing them as a threat that chills the network’s free speech rights.

In the filing, ABC’s legal team proposed a hearing for Friday or next week, on Aug. 24 and 25, and the FCC said that its lawyers would be available on those dates.

In the meantime, the FCC’s lawyers, calling ABC’s schedule “highly expedited,” proposed a briefing schedule for next month, and also wrote that they planned to file a motion to dismiss. They argued that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, not the district court, had jurisdiction, and that the network had to allow the regulatory process to play out.

The agency’s legal team claimed that the network was trying to “circumvent an administrative proceeding followed by judicial review in a court of appeals.”

They wrote, “Although framed as a First Amendment retaliation claim, Plaintiffs’ chief concern appears to be the Commission’s exercise of its statutory authority to ensure that broadcast licensees operate in the public interest, and its conduct of an administrative process that could include (but has not yet been determined to require) a hearing on Plaintiffs’ license qualifications and, depending on the results of any such hearing, hypothetical future license revocations.”

In its lawsuit, ABC’s legal team indicated that they were taking action in anticipation of the FCC designating the license renewals for an administrative hearing, a potentially lengthy process that only added to the uncertainty of whether the stations’ licenses would be revoked.

In the latest filing, its legal team wrote that they have “raised a textbook First Amendment retaliation claim. Courts in this District have already recognized that such claims belong in federal court, not before the very agency accused of engaging in First Amendment retaliation.”

The network’s legal team argued that they have already “documented the irreparable harm [ABC is] suffering, and Defendants’ proposed solution would further exacerbate those harms.”

The network also referred to the potential of the FCC designating the license renewal for a hearing as “sanctions.” The FCC said that it would give the court 48 hours notice before doing so.

“Defendants effectively seek permission to impose draconian sanctions with only 48 hours’ notice, while continuing to hang the threat of those sanctions over Plaintiffs’ heads and remaining free to engage in other forms of retaliation,” the network’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

The FCC said that a hearing designation order would not be a “sanction,” but “would simply set in place a further administrative process in which Plaintiffs would have the opportunity to make their case.”