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Developing Fresh Voices and PRODUCING THEATRE for the 21st Century
2019 reading festival @ the darkhorse theatre chapel
LIQUID SMOKED by Arabelle Pollick / Dec. 9 @ 7:30 p.m
Directed by Ibby Cizmar
Cast: Ibby Cizmar, Obadiah Ewing-Roush, Sam Kell, Ra'Shaun Simon
Big Jim, Lil Jim and Saki are hungover and holed up in a Tennessee bar as the pending White Lives Matter protest brews beyond the door. They struggle to piece together the screwed-up-ness of the previous night, fogging reality. Racket and cidadas emerge.
Arabelle Pollick is a choreographer, actress and devoted theatre lover who hails from Pittsburgh, PA. She moved south to Tennessee nearly six years ago after a stint in Madrid, Spain, where she studied migratory movement, women’s studies and art history at Universidad Antonio de Nebrija. She is the current representative for the Dramatists Guild of America -- Tennessee Chapter. In 2017, she directed the Tennessee production of BANNED TOGETHER: A CENSORSHIP CABARET as part of a National project for the Dramatists Guild Legal Defense Fund.
FREE AND PUBLIC CITIZEN by Alicia Haymer / Dec. 10 @ 7:30 p.m.
Directed by Shawn Whitsell
Cast: Doug Allen, Percy Bell, Ethan H. Jones, Stella Reed-Patterson, Francine Berk
A Black family lives across from a pork processing plant; the plant’s waste has contaminated the neighborhood's water system, and the matriarch of the family is terminally ill due to exposure to the pollution. Drama ensues as the oldest son in the family pickets outside the plant, the grandson of the family comes home from medical school for the summer, and another son returns unexpectedly from prison.
Alicia Haymer, a Nashville native and Fisk University alum, is honored to work with Tennessee Playwrights Studio as she develops her second full-length play. In the 20+ years that Alicia has been on stage in Nashville, she has worked with Nashville Children's Theater, Amun Ra Theater, SistaStyle Productions, Tennessee Women’s Theater Project, Destiny Theater Experience and Nashville Repertory Theater, among other wonderful organizations. She has also had the pleasure of directing with Actor's Bridge Ensemble and Street Theatre. She is thankful for yet another opportunity to express herself through the written word.
SHOPGIRLS by Jessica Suchon / Dec. 12 @ 7:30 p.m.
Directed by Nikki Staggs
Cast: Prenda Mercado, Lexi Nimmo, Nikki Staggs, Halee Ventri, Becky Wahlstrom
A comedy-drama that follows four young women working at a women’s clothing store in a busy mall. Over the course of a year, each of them faces an internal battle between her unyielding ambition and desire for comfort. Their relationships to one another and the world around them change as they confront issues of class, race, education, upward mobility, and gender against a high-energy backdrop of colorful dresses, uncomfortable shoes, and whimsical clientele.
Jessica Lynn Suchon is the author of SCAVENGER, winner of the 2018 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest and forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2019. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University and has received honors from the Academy of American Poets, as well as an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Willow Springs, Ninth Letter, Yemassee, Muzzle Magazine and RHINO Poetry, among others. Her librettos have appeared or are forthcoming in works by Stephanie Ann Boyd for the Eureka Ensemble, EKMELES vocal ensemble, Æpex Contemporary Performance with the Dark Sky Project.
SUNSHINE MADNESS by Lori Fischer / Dec. 13 @ 7:30 p.m.
Directed by David Ian Lee
Cast: Molly Breen, Lori Fischer, Ang Madaline-Johnson, Jay Rudolph, Wesley Paine
Sisters battle over the division of property of their recently deceased mother, while an unexpected visitor unexpectedly moves in and begins to wage weather war on various people and countries from their living room.
Lori Fischer received the 2008 New York University Harry Kondoleon Graduate Award in Playwriting recipient and was a 2008-09 Dramatists Guild Fellow. She received her MFA from the NYU Dramatic Writing Department in 2008. Her drama PETIE has been called a "modern day classic" and was recently produced by Theatre East in NYC. Lori co-wrote and starred in her musical, THE SPARKLEY CLEAN FUNERAL SINGERS (published by Samuel French), at Capital Repertory Theatre and Cumberland County Playhouse. Lori also wrote and starred in her Off-Broadway musical, BARBARA’S BLUE KITCHEN, also published by Samuel French. In 2017, she performed in her comedy, GREENER PASTURES, at Cumberland County Playhouse. Lori is an adjunct writing professor at both New York University and Lipscomb University. Most recently, she was selected for the Dramatists Guild Foundation’s new playwriting initiative. Find out more about Lori at www.lorifischer.net.
BIG DRY RUN by Briana Cox / Dec. 14 @ 7:30 p.m.
Directed by Candace-Omnira
Cast: Monique Gentry, Beth Henderson, Josh Kiev, LaTia Lewis, Joe Mobley, Maggie Pitt, Deborah Seidel, Lane Wright
A dark comedy set in the midst of opioid-afflicted rural Tennessee, which follows Fair, Lonnie, and Gina on a surreal and meandering quest through their trailer park to find Fair’s drug addicted and disappeared mother before things get a helluva lot worse.
Briana Cox was born and raised in Tullahoma, TN — a town inexplicably found on state maps. She is the oldest of seven children, a first-generation academic, and a recent graduate from Swarthmore College, where she studied cognitive science and Japanese. As a twenty-something emerging author, she doesn’t have many published pieces under her belt, but a few smatterings of prose and short fiction can be found in the Decades Review, the Swarthmore Review, and the YoungArts Writers’ Anthology. When she isn’t writing, she spends her time brushing up on Japanese to maybe one day be more literate than a Japanese middleschooler.
2018 reading festival @ the darkhorse theatre chapel
KINGDOM (a play about Snow White and climate change) by Claudia Barnett
Nov. 25 @ 7:30 PM (4610 Charlotte Ave. -- entrance on 47th Ave. N.)
Directed by Leah Lowe
Inspired by the true story of a Norwegian valley that never sees winter sun, Kingdom (a play about Snow White and climate change) traces a hundred years of environmental hubris, including attempts to split atoms, tame a waterfall, and transmute air, culminating in a radical act of community as an artist conducts sunlight onto town square. Kingdom presents history as a parable, focusing on a blind girl who thrives in darkness and the personified conflict between natural history and unnatural selection.
Cast: Tamara Todres, Ted Welch, Robert Chambers, Jessica Anderson, Patriq James, Josh Inocalla, Candace Kirkpatrick, Molly Breen, Kalee Smyth
BLACK AND BLUE (OR THE MAN IN THE PANTRY) by Matt Garner
Nov. 27 @ 7:30 PM (4610 Charlotte Ave. -- entrance on 47th Ave. N.)
Directed by Beki Baker
Everyone and everything is abandoning Tom... that is to say... everyone except the man in the pantry.
Partially inspired by the Dickensian ghost story, BLACK AND BLUE (OR THE MAN IN THE PANTRY) is an exploration of the depths of loss, bitterness, rage, and kindness withheld... and what or who may come to us in the night when hope has left us.
Cast: Chip Arnold, Karen Sternberg, David Ian Lee, Ethan Jones, Brian Russell, Beki Baker
NEC COMPUNCTI by Lou Johnson
Nov. 29 @ 7:30 PM (4610 Charlotte Ave. -- entrance on 47th Ave. N.)
Directed by Shawn Whitsell
This is NOT a play about the wrongfully convicted! That bastard's guilty as sin!
As Josiah “Big Joe” Morgan spends his final days on death row, his previous life outside his tiny cell snaps into sharp focus. How did he get there, and can he deny the seemingly inevitable?
Cast: Patriq James, Robert Chambers, Gabe Atchley, Leonard Ledford III, Jalen Dukes, Lexi Nimmo, LaTia Lewis, Howard Snyder, Kalee Smyth
THE ODD EVANGELICAL by Gaye Jeffers
Nov. 30 @ 7:30 PM (4610 Charlotte Ave. -- entrance on 47th Ave. N.)
Directed by Blake Harris
A dark comedy about faith, politics, and marriage, The Odd Evangelical is shocking and hilarious. Lynn, an Evangelical church admin, meets a former crime reporter, Mary Greed, who challenges her ideas about faith and the function of the church. Through a long sleepless night, Lynn and her husband, Gardner, are visited by visions of Blessed and Reason in a weird game of dodgeball as questions of God and country, fear and safety are addressed between bites of Little Debbie cakes and surprise visitors from the past.
Cast: Anne Swedberg, Grace Holtz, Kaleb Moran, Terrance Wright, Maggie McNulty, Autumn Hemmelgarn
FAN ME WITH A BRICK by Kenley Smith
Dec. 1 @ 7:30 PM (4610 Charlotte Ave. -- entrance on 47th Ave. N.)
Directed by Alicia Haymer
When Victoria sets out to learn more of her family’s history, she opens a portal to a past full of loss, pain and indomitable perseverance. Her mother reluctantly joins her, and the two women uncover old wounds — a scandalous affair in segregated Virginia, a stolen child, a lost parent, a horrific accident — that linger unhealed in the present. The play is based on actual events. Original research by Yalewa Sparrowhawk.
Cast: Miranda Pepin, Alicia Haymer, Nikki Staggs, Carmen Ridley, Ang Madeline-Johnson, Christopher Bosen, LaTia Lewis, Eric Butler, Brianna Booker, Shawn Whitsell, Ethan Jones, Jalen Grady-Dukes, Beth Henderson