Pearl Cleage Directed by Taylor Reynolds Welcome to the Theater
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DIGGING IN THE DARK BY PEARL CLEAGE DIRECTED BY TAYLOR REYNOLDS WELCOME TO THE THEATER Welcome to Keen Company! Our mission centers on identification and connection, two elements which thrive in comfortable and safe environments. So we’re taking a second to really say, Welcome! We are glad you’re here. Our audiences are at the heart of our work, and your experience matters to us. We hope you'll feel free to enjoy this piece of audio theater in whatever way moves you. Go ahead: laugh, cry, gasp, scream, even give it a standing ovation! Great stories invoke big reactions. We aren’t here to tell you how to connect, we just hope you feel welcome to listen. LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT We offer this Land Acknowledgment to recognize the long history of the territory where we live and work, and its significance for the Indigenous peoples who lived and continue to live here and to demonstrate our commitment to addressing the legacy of colonialism in our work and practices. Keen Company produces in New York City, which is the traditional land of the Lenape People. Since our activities this season are shared digitally, we’d also like to acknowledge and consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technologies. Much of the art we make leaves significant carbon footprints, contributing to changing climates that disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples worldwide. We invite you to join us in acknowledging this as well as our shared responsibility: to make good use of this time, and for each of us to consider our roles in reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship. We plan to continue this practice of land acknowledgments at all future live events, and to build on this practice in thoughtful ways, so as to better engage with Indingeous peoples and Indigenous stories. DIGGING IN THE DARK By Pearl Cleage Directed by Taylor Reynolds Starring The Woman………………Rachel Christopher Her Brother………………..…Russell G. Jones His Girlfriend……………Janelle McDermoth Sound Design by Fan Zhang Stage Managed by Norman Anthony Small Sound Engineered by Garrett Schultz The Hear/Now Season of Audio Theater is Artistic Directed by Jonathan Silverstein, with Director of New Work Jeremy Stoller. Hear/Now theme composed by Billy Recce. Digging in the Dark takes audiences to a moonless night in the woods outside Atlanta, where a woman awaits her scheming brother’s arrival. He thinks he’s coming to claim a valuable family heirloom, but she’s not to be underestimated. Listen is as one family excavates generational wounds to settle an old score before sunrise. WHO’S WHO RACHEL CHRISTOPHER (The Woman) New York: Bad News!, NYU Skirball w/ Joanne Akalaitis, King Phillip, Clubbed Thumb; What To Send Up When It Goes Down, UTR-The Public/The Movement Theatre Company; Minor Character, UTR-Public Theater; Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, The Play Company; At the Table, Fault Line Theatre; TV/Film: Girl on the Train, The Upside, “Billions,” “Madame Secretary,” “Blindspot,” “Instinct,” “Elementary” Regional: An Iliad (Long Wharf Theatre); What To Send Up When It Goes Down (Woolly Mammoth/A.R.T./ TMTC); Intimate Apparel (Shakespeare and Company); The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare Festival St. Louis); Detroit 67 (PlayMakers Repertory Company); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare Festival St. Louis); Disgraced (Rep. Theatre St. Louis); All’s Well That Ends Well (Bread Loaf); Susan Johnston, The Heidi Chronicles (Trinity Repertory Company); Sonia, Crime and Punishment (Trinity Rep.); Alma, Yellowman (Trinity Rep.); Zero Cost House, Pig Iron RUSSELL G. JONES (Her Brother) is an AUDELCO, OBIE and SAG Award winning actor. Most recently he was a series regular on CBS's “Tommy”opposite Edie Falco. A fixture on New York City stages since the 90's Russell is proud to have originated roles in Lynn Nottage's Ruined, Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home From The Wars Parts 1, 2 & 3, Tanya Barfield's The Call, Fernanda Coppel's King Liz and two by Stephen Adly Guirgis Our Lady of 121st Street and In Arabia We'd All Be Kings. Some film highlights include “Motherless Brooklyn,” “Detroit,” “Side Effects”, “Traffic” & “Robert Patton Spruill’s Squeeze.” Recent TV includes “Bull”, “Orange Is The New Black,” “The Last OG,” “Godless" and “The Americans.” He is the founder and Chief of Pedagogy at BLIND SPOT EXPERIENCE a campaign that facilitates cross cultural dialogue and critical thinking by providing context and tools for perceiving racial inequity. Www.russellgjones.com JANELLE MCDERMOTH (His Girlfriend) is a multi-platform creator from The Bronx, New York and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Broadway: A Bronx Tale. Off Broadway: We’re Gonna Die (Lortel Nomination, Antonyo Nomination, Outer Critics Circle Honor), The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente, Soul Doctor. TV: “Law & Order: SVU,” “Blue Bloods”, “Blindspot,” “High Maintenance” She can be seen in the upcoming Netflix film, To All The Boys: Always and Forever and continues to record original music combining the poetics that compel her, the hip hop that raised her, and her penchant for the aforementioned theatrics. TAYLOR REYNOLDS (Direction) is a New York-based director from Chicago and one of the Producing Artistic Leaders of OBIE-winning The Movement Theatre Company. She has worked as a director, assistant, and collaborator with companies including Clubbed Thumb, Page 73, Baltimore Center Stage, Signature Theatre Company, Ars Nova, MCC, and The 24 Hour Plays. Selected directing credits: Tambo & Bones (upcoming at Playwrights Horizons/CTG), Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally (Baltimore Center Stage/ Playwrights Realm), Tough (AADA), Plano (Clubbed Thumb, Drama Desk nom for Best Director), Songs About Trains (Radical Evolution), Allond(r)a (New Georges Audrey Residency), Think Before You Holla (creator/deviser). She is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, 2017-2018 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab alum, and member of SDC. BFA, Carnegie Mellon University. www.iamtaylorreynolds.com PEARL CLEAGE (Playwright) Is an Atlanta-based writer whose plays include Pointing at the Moon, What I Learned in Paris, Flyin’ West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, and Bourbon at the Border, commissioned and directed by Kenny Leon at The Alliance Theatre. She is also the author of “A Song for Coretta,” written in 2007 during Cleage’s time as Cosby Professor in Women’s Studies at Spelman College. Her play, The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at A Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years, was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and premiered in the Fall of 2010, in a joint production by The ASF and Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, directed by Susan Booth. Her plays have also been performed at Arena Stage, Hartford Stage, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Huntington Theatre, The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Long Wharf Theatre, Just Us Theatre, True Colors Theatre, Bushfire Theatre, The Intiman Theatre, St. Louis Black Repertory Company and Seven Stages. She is also an accomplished performance artist, often working in collaboration with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr. They have performed at The National Black Arts Festival, The National Black Theatre Festival, and colleges and universities across the country. Cleage and Burnett also collaborated with performance artists Idris Ackamoor and Rhodessa Jones on the script for The Love Project, which premiered at The National Black Theatre Festival in 2008, and is currently touring the country. Cleage is also an accomplished novelist. Her novels include “What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day,” a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah Book Club selection, “I Wish I Had A Red Dress,” “Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do,” “Babylon Sisters,” “Baby Brother’s Blues,” and “Seen It All and Done the Rest.” Her new book, “T”ill You Hear From Me” (Ballantine/One World), was released in April of 2010. She is also the author of “Mad at Miles: A Blackwoman’s Guide to Truth,” a groundbreaking work of race and gender, and “We Speak Your Names,” a praise poem commissioned by Oprah Winfrey for her 2005 celebration of legendary African American women and written in collaboration with Zaron Burnett. Cleage has also written for magazines, including Essence, Vibe, Rap Pages and Ms. In addition to her work as the founding editor of Catalyst Magazine, a literary journal, she was a regular columnist for The Atlanta Tribune for ten years, winning many awards for her thought provoking columns. She has also written for TheDefendersOnLine.com. Cleage has been awarded grants in support of her work from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Fulton County Arts Council, The Georgia Council on the Arts, The Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs and The Coca-Cola Foundation. Her work has earned her many awards and honors, including an NAACP Image Award for fiction in 2008. Pearl Cleage is represented by Ron Gwiazda at Abrams Artists Agency in New York City. Her web site is at www.pearlcleage.net. She also maintains a Facebook Fan Page. FAN ZHANG (Sound Design) Sound design and original music, her recent Off-Broadway design credits includes: Molly Sweeney, Keen Company), A Wedding Toast by the Prophet Cassandra* (Lincoln Center Theater), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (Second Stage&WP Theatre), Paris (Atlantic Theatre), Suicide Forest ( Ma-Yi & ART Theatre), Round Table (59E59), Behind the Sheet (Ensemble Studio Theatre), The Trail of the Catonsville Nine (Transport Group), Three Girls Never Learnt the Way Home (Cherry Lane), Tania In the Gateway Van (New Georges). Regional: Pipeline( Studio Theatre, D.C.), Eclipsed(Milwaukee Rep), Yasmina’s Necklace(Premiere Stages), Seven Guitars(Yale Rep), Redeem (Cincinnati Ballet), Revolutionist (Pittsburgh City Theatre), Red Maple (Capital Rep), Training: MFA, Yale School of Drama. fanzhangsound.com NORMAN ANTHONY SMALL (Stage Manager) Off Broadway: WP Theater: Where We Stand; Atlantic Theater Company: Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven; The Public Theater: A Night of Wild Beauty.