Staged Play Readings 2019-2020
Facing Our Truth by Cordaro Dont’e Santiago
directed by Cordaro Dont’e Santiago
Synopsis to be added
Uncle Vanya by Anton Checkov
translated by Richard Nelson, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky
directed by Kayleigh Michelle
“Vanya” poses the deepest question that we humans ask: Do we matter? No answers are given. However, by the end of the play, we are left with the unmistakable assurance that we must, or there must be something greater than ourselves.
An Experiment with an Air Pump
by Shelagh Stephenson
Directed by Suzanne Ashlock
"Air Pump," takes its title from a 1768 group portrait by Joseph Wright. Shelagh Stephenson has written a play teeming with interest, humor, eloquence and, above all, ideas. The plot takes place in the same house in two different time periods divided by the gap of two hundred years (1799 and 1999). Both years are symbolic—they stand at the turns of new centuries and have to face the challenges the new times are about to bring. The play also implicitly deals with gender roles and questions the stereotypes of women scientists.
Besides the general questions about a scientist's responsibilities and limits, the play is also a mystery. In the modern times, a skeleton is found in the basement. The skipping between the two time periods highlights, then resolves, questions about the identity of the corpse and the means of their death.
An Experiment with an Air Pump was joint recipient of the 1997 Margaret Ramsay Award and premiered at The Royal Exchange Theatre Company, Manchester in February 1997