Alliance Theatre Announces Virtual Play Club Series

The show must go on! We Alliance Theatre is showcasing the finalists of the 16th Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition by making all four scripts available to the public to read between now and April 24, 2020. Then, beginning in one week, you are invited to live virtual meetings with the playwright to discuss the script. The Virtual Play Club series will culminate with an Artists Roundtable Discussion moderated by Rachel Karpf, former Artistic Producer, WP Theater, NYC, and featuring all four Alliance/Kendeda Competition finalists, as well as Atlanta playwrights Will Power, Steve Coulter, Kimberly Belflower, Mary Lynn Owen, and Mark Kendall.

VIRTUAL PLAY CLUB SCHEDULE

UNKINDNESS

by Logan Faust (NYU Tisch)
Read it Now

Thursday, April 16th at 4:00pm
In conversation with the playwright, director Matt Torney and associate producer, Amanda Watkins.

Unkindness tells the story of Bonnie, a grieving mother, and Elijah, a would-be prophet, as they struggle to survive after their only motivations for survival, their son and faith respectively, are taken from them. When a desperate young mother with a dying child comes to them for help, they must confront the only question that matters at the End of the World: what will you do to survive? Inspired by Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, the Bible's First Book of Kings, and the murder-spree of Bonnie and Clyde, Unkindness is one Southerner's attempt to reconcile the destructive and redemptive elements of our myriad, modern-day interpretations of faith.

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DJARUM VANILLA

by Cary Simowitz (UCLA)
Read it Now

Friday, April 17th at 7:00pm
In conversation with the playwright, director Keith Bolden and associate producer, Amanda Watkins.

November 2014. Missouri. The Darren Wilson verdict is imminent. Protests are becoming a daily part of life in Ferguson. The nascent Black Lives Matter movement is gaining national traction as racial tension in Missouri reaches a boiling point. To make matters worse, rumors perpetuated by the media are spreading about the possibility of a race war igniting between a group of black teenagers and Bosnian immigrants.

Meanwhile, ten miles away from Ferguson at an aging gas station/autobody shop, an unlikely friendship is fostered between a twenty-one-year-old black man named Malcolm and a poverty-stricken, seventeen-year-old white girl named Bex after the pair discover a secret hidden beneath the front seat of an abandoned Maserati. In the coming weeks, Malcolm and Bex are forced to test the boundaries of their friendship as the two are confronted with the harsh reality of living in a changing, unjust America.

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MONSTER

by Ava Geyer (UCSD)
Read it Now

Thursday, April 23rd at 4:00pm
In conversation with the playwright, director January LaVoy and associate producer, Amanda Watkins.

When self-help guru Drew Capuano's compulsive masturbation comes to light, he retains the services of the only person who will still represent him: his power hungry twenty-four year-old female assistant. Meanwhile, survivor Mona Giotti works to make sure she's put Drew away for good. Monster is a brutal and brutally funny odyssey through America's media machine that puts perpetrator and survivor on a collision course of reckoning.

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STITCHED WITH A SICKLE AND A HAMMER

by Inna Tsyrlin (Ohio University)
Read it Now

Friday, April 24th at 4:00pm
In conversation with the playwright, director Lauren Morris and associate producer, Amanda Watkins.

Aleksandra, a political prisoner at a GULAG camp and part of the camp's theatre troupe, is forced to help Soviet authorities disguise the existence of the camp in front of a visiting American delegation. She prepares for two roles: the character on stage - Nina from Chekhov's The Seagull - and the role of an actor who isn't imprisoned. In the face of totalitarian power, inside and outside the camp, Aleksandra must decide whether to comply with the regime that has taken away her freedom or commit an act of counterrevolution.

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ARTISTS' ROUNDTABLE

Friday, April 24 at 5:30pm

Artists Roundtable Discussion moderated by Rachel Karpf, former Artistic Producer, WP Theater, NYC, and featuring all four Alliance/Kendeda Competition finalists, as well as Atlanta playwrights Will Power, Steve Coulter, Kimberly Belflower, Mary Lynn Owen, and Mark Kendall.

RSVP

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Click HERE for more information.