SPF 12: Day of Saturn
For Achilles Jones, the reality of his son, Icarus’, attempted suicide still haunts him a year later as he works tirelessly to repair his run-down hardware store alongside a charismatic young volunteer with a painful past of his own. Soon the secrets about Achilles’ son and the truth about their relationship come to light in this planetary collision of loss, humor, Black masculinity and the generational scars that follow us through life.
Development
The Blank Theatre – Staged Reading (2018)
West End Performing Arts Center – Reading (2018)
Inkwell LABS – Zoom Reading (2019)
Leviticus Jelks was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He received a BA in English from Clayton State University. He continued his training at The Horizon Theatre as a Playwriting Fellow and The Alliance Theatre as a Literary Intern. In 2016, he earned a MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. During his time at CMU, he received the Sloan Screenwriting Award (RIVER GODS), the KCACTF’s Lorraine Hansberry Award (A IS FOR APRON). He is a current resident of Los Angeles where he has joined the Playwright’s Union, and has since been the recipient of the 2019 Play LA Humanitas Award, where he workshopped his play, HYDRA, a sci-fi play exploring the monitoring of Black bodies in the prison industrial system. He has worked with various Los Angeles theatre companies such as the Blank Theatre and Inkwell. In the Fall of 2020, he completed a commission play, CALF, for Out of Hand Theatre of Atlanta.
Melissa Coleman-Reed is an international theatre maker: Director, Actor, Producer, Designer based in Los Angeles.
Directing credits: Paradise Blue by Dominique Morisseau (Glendale Community College), You Didn’t Die by John Lavelle (IAMA Theatre), Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage, Men On Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First One Hundred Years (New Village Arts).
Workshops/Development: Long Division by Aja Houston, Day of Saturn by Leviticus Jelks and John Lavelle’s, Inhalation, which is an O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist. Training: Vangeline Butoh (NY), BGB Studios (LA), SITI Company (NY) Steppenwolf West (LA), Butoh Master, Yoshito Ohno (JP) and the School at Steppenwolf (Upcoming: 2022) Focus: the development of new works that foster Activism & grow International Collaborations. Coleman-Reed is curious about truth in connection & movement, magic & transformation, ritual & ensembles. She is presently shifting into directing/producing for TV & Film and training to be an Intimacy Coordinator with IDC
“Day of Saturn”
Achilles – Moe Irvin*
Icarus – Rogelio Douglas III
Odysseus – Leonard J. Moore II
Stage Directions – Amanda Black
Editor – Bree Pavey
*Road Company Member