People power plays. Plays power progress.
Join us for free readings of exciting NEW WORKS that are in keeping with our mission to bring you risky, adventurous plays that you won’t find anywhere else in Southern California.
LOUDER By Caroline V. McGraw
directed by Michelle Bossy
SAT, DEC 10, 12PM
It’s the eve of Y2K and the start of another school year at Ursuline Prep, an all-girls Catholic high school in Cleveland, Ohio. In the convent near campus, the sisters await the return of their students. Sister Ursula awaits the girls with excitement; Sister Mary Magdalene awaits them with ambivalence; Sister Francis Assisi with restraint; and Sister Seraphina with…well, no one quite knows. There’s a new soul in the convent, too: Carly, a postulant who lives with the sisters and works in the school’s front office. But as fissures in the student body and faculty begin to appear—and the 2000th year since Christ’s birth approaches—the five women find their ordinary lives suddenly enveloped by a strange uncertainty. Louder is a play about looking deeply, and the enormity within the seemingly quietest of lives.
Louder was originally commissioned by South Coast Repertory Theater.
MAMA, I WISH I WERE SILVER by Amanda L. Andrei
directed by Rebecca Wear
SAT, DEC 10, 3:30PM
On a cold January day in 2020, Sofia and Ariel, two estranged Filipina American half-sisters, reunite in Virginia to clean out the photographs, papers, and letters of their recently deceased mother. When they find a cassette tape seemingly recorded during martial law in the Philippines, when Ariel was born, they realize that what their mother left behind has a life of its own.
2020: A GOING AWAY PARTY PLAY by Keyanna Khatiblou
directed by James Fowler
SUN, DEC 11, 12PM
First-generation Iranian-American Mina is throwing a party for her closest friends and for you, the audience. Using games, flashbacks, and storytelling, the ensemble reflects on the modern American identity and shares a retelling of Mina’s parents falling in love and staying in love while fleeing the Iranian Revolution. 2020: A Going Away Party Play is a celebration of multicultural identities and an exploration of what it means to leave or lose your home country.
TRAINERS, OR THE BRUTAL UNPLEASANT ATMOSPHERE OF THIS MOST DISAGREEABLE SEASON: A THEATRICAL ESSAY by Sylvan Oswald
directed by Jessica Kubzansky
SUN, DEC 11, 3:30PM
In a parallel present, two queer radicals meet in the fallout of the Second Civil War. If love is the most radical act, can their desire survive the revolution? Based on Montaigne’s intellectual love affair with political thinker Étienne de La Boétie, Trainers explores the different ways we can connect as lovers, activists, and humans.
