Readings

The Word

• Monday, January 20th

  No Soap Radio

  

  Written by: William Ludel

  Directed by: William Ludel

  “In an attempt to understand his father’s suicide, a son reconstructs the night of his father’s death by bringing together the people who last saw him alive.”

  Featuring:
  Ray Abruzzo
  Tina Carlisi
  Isabella Feliciana
  Arye Gross
  John Snow
  Jon Sprik
  Kelly Thiebaud

• Monday, January 27th

  Juliet & Romeo

  

  Playwright: Ladd R. Sullivan
  Director: Elizabeth Herron

  1640: A producer hires his favorite prostitute to play
  Juliet in a revival of Romeo & Juliet. The Director has
  two weeks to turn a Woman of the Night into a sweet,
  demur, innocent Juliet. What could possibly go wrong?
  How about a rebellion by the actors?
  Or a very outspoken leading lady?
  Or the being thrown into prison for this stunt?
  If Shakespeare saw this play … he would laugh.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

• January 28th 7:30

  The Rink at the End of the World

  

  WRITTEN BY MEGAN TABAQUE
  DIRECTED BY COURTNEY ULRICH

  When an entire country club of athletes get taken out by a rogue bout of covid, a motley crew of mall-rink figure skaters find themselves on a flight to Croatia to compete in the World Synchronized Figure Skating Championships as first-alternates. As they train, complain, destroy, and rebuild each other on their quest to achieve the impossible, something darker looms on the edges of the global stage: a nuclear arms race. The Rink at the End of the World is a comic experiment in synchronization, surreality, and apocalypse using the high stakes emotional drives of teen girls to capture the contemporary sense of doom younger generations might feel living in a world uninvested in its own future and instead invested in its own demise.

  Featuring:

  Christina Carlisi, Julia Manis, Tally McCormack, Bebe Katsenes, Jacquelyn Ferguson, KevinMcCorkle, Naomi Rubin and Lauren Schaffel

• January 29th 7:30

  Un-Motherhood

  WRITTEN BY KIM YAGED
  DIRECTED BY CHRISTINA CARLISI

  Un-Motherhood, a one-person show with more than one person, traverses the highlights and lowlights of parenting while not admitting you’re a parent. This raw, biting, comedic tour-de-force delves into the world of losing the kids you never knew you wanted and finding yourself in the process.

  Featuring:
  Presciliana Esparolini
  Lilli Passero
  Stephanie Erb

• February 18th 7:30

  The Hands of Banneker

  WRITTEN BY MALIQUE QUINN
  DIRECTED BY
  A young, charismatic, and curious Benjamin Banneker navigates grief, vices, and love when he is left with the responsibility of taking care of the family farm. However, when he decides to pursue a new vision that will change America forever, he is forced to deal with a new kind of warfare, beyond what he, or any of his family has faced before.

• March 3rd 7:30

  ANNA/MARIA

  

  WRITTEN BY Michael Meija
  DIRECTED BY

  Maria and Chris’s lives collide when they uncover chilling similarities between the unsolved murders of their brothers. After years of relentless searching, their journey for answers leads them believe they have found a potential serial killer – a retired business man named Richard. Now Maria and Chris must decide if they will pursue justice or exact revenge. Are Maria and Chris about to catch a monster, or are they losing control of the case…and their minds?

• March 4th 7:30

  The Death Doula

  

  WRITTEN BY RACHEL BORDERS
  DIRECTED BY CARLYLE KING

  A family is surprised to learn their patriarch is dying and even more surprised to find he hired a Death Doula to assist them through the transition. A dark comedy about death, inheritance, and the decisions that define our legacies.

• March 10th 7:30

  True Adventures for Men

  

  WRITTEN BY STEVE HARPER

  DIRECTED BY ANDRE G. BROWN
  

  When Mark, an Ivy League grad looking for love, meets Kyle, a free spirit with a wandering eye, they forge a complicated relationship with an uncertain future. After a steamy video with a porn star unearths hidden truths and forces a painful confrontation, Kyle goes missing. Mark is desperate to track him down. Along the way, morality wavers, monogamy blurs, and every choice carries the weight of no return. True Adventures for Men is a provocative and unexpectedly funny exploration of love, identity, and self destruction, where nothing is ever as simple—or as innocent—as it seems.

• March 11th 7:30

  Roost

  WRITTEN BY Fiona Gorry-Hines
  DIRECTED BY

  Following the untimely death of their recently-retired coworker, a small group of employees at Libirdy Farms, a massive poultry producer, gathers to stage their late friend’s musical adaptation of the German fairytale, “The Brementown Musicians.” As they prepare to present the play at The Roost, Libirdy’s annual company picnic, and as news begins to circulate about the circumstances surrounding its author’s death, the ensemble begins to question their loyalty to the company.

• April 21st 7:30

  111 ORCHESTRA PLACE

  

  WRITTEN BY CAMILLE SIMONE THOMAS
  DIRECTED BY INGER TUDOR

  In Detroit’s opulent Hotel Gotham enterprising hotel owner John J. White is willing to do keep his dream alive while co-owner Irving Roane isn’t too sure that every end is worth the means and doesn’t know what to dream for anymore.

  In Detroit’s opulent Hotel Gotham naive but ambitious June Gholston dreams of becoming a lawyer to take care of her people in a city under attack while lounge singer Delores Miggins dreams of touring internationally and only taking care of herself

  In Detroit’s opulent Hotel Gotham dreams are inflated, popped, and patched back
  together year after year but, just how many times can a dream be deferred until utter
  destruction?

  A speculative historical fiction play based on some very real events from 1957 – 1963.

• April 22nd 7:30 PM

  Mister Muggs

  

  WRITTEN BY LOUISA NICKEL

  DIRECTED BY
  In 1978 over 900 members of The Peoples’ Temple ingested poison in a small isolated promise land in South America. Only three people were found with gunshot wounds, their leader Jim Jones, my second cousin Annie Moore, and their beloved pet chimpanzee Mister Muggs. “MISTER MUGGS” is a partially verbatim play that retells the downfall of the people of Jonestown from the perspective of an undercover chimpanzee television host, Mister Muggs. In a reverse National Geographic this nihilist
  reality show uses primary documents to uncover the line between dreamers and extremists.

• April 29th 7:30pm

  Dry Summer

   

  

  WRITTEN BY Robert Axelrod
  DIRECTED BY

  Featuring Carlyle King

  Desperate to get his life back on track, a depressed gay thirty-something returns home
  for the summer, where he winds up taking a job as an unconventional sober companion
  to his alcoholic former neighbor as she attempts to make it to 90 days of sobriety.

• May 27th 7:30

  POW POW POW KABOOM! Or, How Do We Get People To Care

  WRITTEN BY DOM MARTELLO
  DIRECTED BY

  POW POW POW KABOOM! Or, How Do We Get People To Care follows a focus group reviewing reality TV pilots that struggle to see eye to eye, being followed by a presidential candidate as she gets frustrated with her chief of staff because he isn’t collecting data fast enough, being followed by a group of mysterious entities who get to decide the fate of life as we know it. This political satire is a case study cracking open the absurdity of the mass consumption of (and indifference to) violence, catastrophe, and loss of human life.

Summer Playwrights Festival