18-19 Season
Making Tracks
A reading series produced in partnership with PlayMakers Repertory Company
Following the success of the 2017-18 season, we are teaming up again with PlayMakers Repertory Company to co-produce a year-long reading series of new plays. Four plays will be chosen, a local playwright, a national playwright, an international playwright, and a student playwright.
The four plays being presented this year are:
Dates
Friday, April 13th, 2018 starting at 1:00 pm
Saturday, April 14th, 2018 starting at 5:00 pm
Sunday, April 15th, 2018 starting at 7:00 pm
Location
The Kenan Theatre, Studios 101 and 104
UNC-CH Center for Dramatic Art
*Admission free at the door*
The Performances:
Trial 9
By Jonathan Moises Olivares
Directed by Vivienne Benesch
Times: April 13, 1:00pm, April 15, 7:00pm
Is Love Enough?
Inside the world of conversion therapy, same sex attraction is a disease, and “therapists” are determined to find a cure. When they find one, Elijah’s world is turned upside down. He loves Orlando and Orlando loves him, but Trial 9 asks the question: is love enough?
Noms De Guerre
By Jacqueline Lawton
Directed by Kaja Dunn
Times: April 13, 3:00pm, April 15, 7:00pm
When politics become personal, what price must we pay?
Every time Mira’s husband returns home from war, it’s a difficult transition. But this time, as her race for Governor gets underway, they are both thrust into the spotlight, which illuminates longstanding tensions, shifting allegiances and a new secret that threatens to derail her campaign. As the man she knows disappears into a man forever changed by war, she must decide what price she’s willing to pay to stand by him.
Eight Nights
By Jennifer Maisel
Directed by Joseph Megel
Times: April 13, 7:00pm, April 14, 5:00pm
When all you can do is hope.
In a cramped apartment on the Lower East Side, a young refugee woman yearns to start a new life in the United States. As she works to vanquish the past that haunts her, she is accompanied by her father, husband, friends, daughter, and granddaughter. Set in a single apartment and spanning the years 1949 – 2016, Eight Nights tells the story of refugees from the past and present, taking disparate circumstances and laying bare their all too similar horrors. Life is brutal, but they live with the hope that a better future awaits.
Illegal Helpers
By Maxi Obexer, Translated by Neil Blackadder
Directed by Talya Klein
Times: April 14th, 8pm
We call them criminals for one reason: they help people.
They save migrants without legal status from deportation. They provide shelter. They bring them across the border when all other options are exhausted. Some of them have been convicted on several occasions; others risk their profession and status. They come from the middle of society: doctors, judges, social workers, students. But what they do brings them to the brink of the law and sometimes beyond. They take these risks because they must and because they dream of a world where compassion is not a crime. Prize-winning German-Italian playwright Maxi Obexer weaves together documentary interviews in this passionate appeal for human dignity in the face of the refugee crisis threatening to engulf Western Europe.
Elephant in a Hobgoblin Suit: A Farce on Vulnerability
Created and written by DDT
Directed by Tracy Bersley
Performed by Dorothy Abrahams and Daniel Kublick.
Tracy Bersley interrogates vulnerability with DDT’s trademark combination of improve, live feed video, projections, scripted material, choreography, and audience involvement. Inspired by Charles Ludlom’s axioms for the Ridiculous Theatre, Bersley asks what is true vulnerability? And what can propel us to be vulnerable?
Dates
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Location
Studio 6
Swain Hall
Tiny Luxuries
By Heather Tatreau
Tiny Luxuries is a dance-theater piece based upon Clarice Lispector’s 1977 novella, The Hour of the Star. Through the rich combination of text and movement, a visceral study of relationships and the quest for happiness emerge. An eccentric cast of characters construct the identity of Macabéa, a poor typist from the slums who longs to be pretty.
Will she find her voice to contribute to her own existence before time runs out?
This program is supported by the Orange County Arts Commission.
The Talk
Written and Performed by Sonny Kelly
Directed by Joseph Megel
Sonny Kelly delivers a virtuosic one-man show that draws on the voices of ancestors, elders, youths, and intellectuals to engage in the difficult conversations that we must have with our children as we prepare them to survive and thrive in a racialized America.
Dates & Locations
January 24 - February 10
Durham, Fruit and Produce Company
305 South Dillard Street, Durham NC 27701
February 14 - February 17
Chapel Hill, Historic Playmakers Theater
101 E. Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill NC 27514