The Contemporary American Theater Festival will be presenting its inaugural Fall Reading Series. For over thirty years, the professional new play festival held performances in July. This is the first time the festival will offer programming outside of its traditional summer season.
Peggy McKowen, appointed as the festival’s Producing Artistic Director last year, selected the plays. “I was looking for plays that felt fresh – exploring themes and styles CATF has not recently produced.”
Sarah Bierstock
The plays produced in the Fall Reading Series are under consideration for CATF’s 2023 July season, which will be McKowen’s first season of curating the festival’s summer repertory.
The plays in the Fall Reading Series are: Spiritus/ Virgil’s Dance by Dael Orlandersmith; Our Shrinking Shrinking World by Richard Dresser; MAD by Sarah Bierstock; Your Name Means Dream by José Rivera; and Lavender Men by Roger Q. Mason
“These plays have some laughs, something we all need right now. But, they also have a strong sense of purpose about life,” said McKowen.
Readings will take place between October 21 and November 5 and will take place at the Marinoff Theater on the campus of Shepherd University, which hosts CATF, and at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, WV.
Audience members can determine their own admission price, with a suggested amount of $10.
For the full schedule, to make reservations, and for more information about the Contemporary American Theater Festival’s Fall Reading Series, visit CATF online at catf.org.
Playwright Ifa Bayeza holds a proclamation given by the DC City Council and Chairman Phil Mendelson designating the second week of October as The Till Trilogy Week.
Mayor, City Council Proclamations Designate Till Trilogy Week in Washington, DC
Over the weekend, we were honored to have members of Congress, City government, the Till family, and Mosaic supporters experience The Till Trilogy together. Mayor Muriel Bowser awarded a proclamation to Mosaic and the City Council and Chairman Phil Mendelson formally named this week “The Till Trilogy Week” in the District of Columbia.
Join us to see these potent, important works.
Marvin Bowser, brother of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, reads a statement from the Mayor acknowledging the admirable work of playwright Ifa Bayeza and Mosaic Theater to stage The Till Trilogy in the nation’s capital.
Ifa Bayeza accepts a proclamation from the DC City Council naming the second week of October The Till Trilogy Week.
Four Mosaic Theater Company partners making this exciting premiere of a rotating repertory production of the Emmett Till Trilogy of plays (“The Ballad of Emmett Till,” “That Summer in Sumner,” and “Benevolence”) possible were interviewed for the podcast.
“This latest Embracing Arlington Arts Educational Podcast Series focuses not only on the premiere, but also to embellish and continue the conversation about racial justice in our nation today and to discuss how the theater industry is, and should be spurring those discussions,” stated Janet Kopenhaver, the organization’s president.
Playwright, Ifa Bayeza
The Educational Podcast series features renowned playwright Ifa Bayeza who wrote all three plays; Talvin Wilks, Director; Reginald Douglas, Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company; and Antonio Michael Woodard, Actor (portraying Emmett Till). All four expressed their views and insight on the continued impact of this critical event in our country’s history and the responsibility of the theater industry to keep the conversation going.
Ms. Bayeza wrote this series of plays to “celebrate the joy and majesty of this family.” She is hoping to challenge our contemporary audiences to think about what we are going to do to end racial injustice. “If the Till saga was the spark of the Civil Rights movement, I hope to stimulate sparks in audience members to do something,” she concluded in the interview.
Mr. Wilks offered resounding support for the importance of the media in bringing visibility to the injustices of racism, but questions “why does it take an image to gain people’s attention?” He also expounded upon why these plays are important to see in order to understand the significant impact of the Emmett Till murder in our nation’s history.
As Mosaic Theater Company’s Artistic Director, Mr. Douglas expressed his strong belief that the theater industry plays a big role in spurring audience members to become active and energized about combating racial injustice. “I do think that art is action,” Douglas explained. “It sparks dialogue about our community, makes people think and to take action,” Douglas added.
Rounding out the series was a very thought-provoking interview with Actor Antonio Michael Woodard who portrays Emmett Till. To him, theater has always been a catalyst for change and an instrument to encourage conversations about important social issues in our nation. He urged audience members to see the plays to understand what happened in 1955 and to ensure that it never happens again. “You can’t get where you’re going until you look back,” he concluded.
The Till Trilogy is a series of plays by noted playwright Ifa Bayeza that reflect on the life, death, and legacy of Emmett Till, whose murder in 1955 remains one of the most pivotal moments in American history. Under the direction of the acclaimed Talvin Wilks, the three plays – The Ballad of Emmett Till, Benevolence, and the world premiere That Summer in Sumner – will star 10 actors performing in rotating repertory for the first time. Filled with music, poetry, and imagination, this rare theatrical event will honor the ongoing fight for racial justice in our country and offer audiences of all ages an opportunity for collective reckoning, reflection, and response. Mosaic Theater Company of DC produces bold, culturally diverse theater that illuminates critical issues, elevates fresh voices, and sparks connection among communities throughout our region and beyond.
Embracing Arlington Arts is a non-profit organization whose mission is to advance the vibrancy and health of arts and culture. Interested supporters are encouraged to “follow” and “like” us on Facebook; and follow us on Twitter.
Opening at Mosaic Theatre Company on Oct. 4, the trilogy’s director, “We know the end at the beginning, so the point of Ballad is to give him that joy back.”
“What if we think about Till’s legacy rather than his death?”
This is the question that animates Mosaic Theatre Company’s The Till Trilogy, an ambitious mounting of playwright Ifa Bayeza’s three-part opus chronicling the life, death, and enduring influence of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy whose brutal murder in 1955 helped fire the civil rights movement. Two of the plays—The Ballad of Emmett Till, which follows young Emmett on his fateful trip to Mississippi; and Benevolence, a look at two couples, one Black and one White, wrestling with Till’s murder—have previously been onstage. Now Bayeza completes the saga with That Summer in Sumner, a dramatization of the Mississippi trial that set Till’s killers free paired with the story of the Black journalists who endeavored to uncover the truth.
The three plays are staged in repertory with a company of 10 actors; audiences can enjoy the plays in any order, and each stands on its own. The production anchors a sprawling series of free events dedicated to honoring Till’s legacy, with discussions and readings taking place in museums, community centers, and libraries across the D.C. metro area. Together, the unique repertory and extensive programming represent an opportunity for Mosaic, under the new leadership of Artistic Director Reginald L. Douglas, to strengthen local ties and draw audiences into a pivotal moment in American civil rights history—one that Bayeza has described, unabashedly, as the stuff of myth and epic.
Born into a family of artists and activists, Bayeza has always mixed creativity with politics. At 15, she got her first summer job working with her father, a physician, at a migrant camp in New Jersey, where workers often lived in destitute conditions. She vividly recalls one child, maybe 8 years old, whose body was riddled with rat bites and whose face was so world-weary he looked like an old man. “That was a transformative moment,” she tells City Paper. “Seeing what were, to me, the last vestiges of what American slavery was like, I was so stunned that I committed myself to chronicling my people. The wonder and allure of theater was the way I thought I could best do it.”
It was the early 1970s and around that same time Bayeza first learned the story of Emmett Till via a reprint of Jet magazine. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, famously demanded an open-casket funeral so the world could see what Jim Crow injustice had wrought on her child; she urged Jet to publish photos of his body, and the publication quickly took the story national. Like many, the teenage Bayeza was horrified, and changed, by what she saw.
As an adult, Bayeza delved into Till’s life, even meeting with friends and family members who knew him personally. Her findings generated the foundations of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which premiered in 2008 at the Goodman Theatre in Till’s hometown of Chicago. One of Till’s childhood friends spoke to Bayeza personally and gave the play her stamp of approval. “She wrote me a letter to say that she had to close her eyes to realize that wasn’t Emmett on the stage,” Bayeza says.
Since its debut, The Ballad has been produced across the country, even as Bayeza has tinkered with its structure to accommodate different casting demands. Now, with the repertory at Mosaic, she has a chance not only to bring the project full circle with That Summer in Sumner but to mold all three plays into a collective, a process she describes as both exciting and daunting.
She has an experienced hand at the wheel in Talvin Wilks, who directed a previous production of The Ballad and the 2018 world premiere of Benevolence, both at Penumbra Theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Mosaic’s previous artistic director, Ari Roth, attended the debut of Benevolence, and initiated plans to produce the full trilogy in D.C. Wilks remained attached to the Mosaic project despite Roth’s departure in the fall of 2020 and the cancellation of the run originally planned for that year.
Director Talvin Wilks in rehearsal for That Summer in Sumner; Credit: Billie Krishawn
While The Ballad and Benevolence are familiar territory, Wilks sees his work as anything but a retread. “Can you learn from and be informed by the first idea, but not necessarily replicate it?” he muses. “This is not like a touring production or a road show; it’s actually, in its own right, a new production.”
These new productions come at a time when Till’s case is garnering fresh press. In August, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indictCarolyn Bryant Donham, the White woman who accused Till of harassing her, prompting her husband, Roy Bryant, and his brother J.W. Milam to kidnap, torture, and lynch the boy. The grand jury’s decision came after the June discovery of an unserved arrest warrant that named all three on suspicion of kidnapping and manslaughter. Later this year, a high-profile film titled Till, directed by Chinonye Chukwu, will bring the events to the screen while drawing focus to Mamie Till-Mobley’s activism.
For Wilks, these developments might make the case seem newly relevant, but it’s all part of a much larger arc. “There’s always been a call on Emmett Till when we’ve traveled through the elements of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown,” he reminds us. “Emmett and Mamie Till are of our legacy.” As for what the new developments mean for the production, Wilks understands it might bring people to the theater, but insists it doesn’t impact how they think about the work.
What does impact the work is Bayeza’s drive to recapture who Emmett was as a person before he became a tragic icon. During rehearsal for a pivotal scene in The Ballad in which Emmett, known by his nickname “Bo,” pleads with his mother to let him travel to Mississippi, Wilks emphasized the need to embrace Black boy joy. “It’s very important because that’s what Ifa has done with Ballad, especially, and even in the way he travels through That Summer in Sumner,” Wilks says. “It’s giving him his adolescence back, seeing him as a joyful child who loved to tell jokes, loved bubble gum, loved nice things, and was quite a dresser. We know the end at the beginning, so the point of Ballad is to give him that joy back.”
Playwright Ifa Bayeza speaks at the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center as part of Mosaic’s community engagement opportunities; Credit: Jhon Ochoa
During the scene, Bo is portrayed by three actors, forming his own chorus. The Ballad’s “fulltime” Bo, Antonio Michael Woodard, along with Vaughn Ryan Midder and Jaysen Wright, tease and plead with his mother, played by Billie Krishawn. Wilks and the cast work through the beats at the table in a rehearsal room covered by a comprehensive historical timeline, courtesy of the production’s dramaturg, Dr. Faedra Chatard Carpenter. With the help of choreographer and assistant director Sandra L. Holloway, the scene rises from the table and lands on its feet as a sort of doo-wop number. The three Bos step to and from Krishawn’s Mamie, snapping in time, moving lithe and free like the man he is itching to become.
Throughout the scene, Mamie instructs her son to mind his place—to not even look at White women, let alone speak to them. “Mississippi is not Chicago,” Mamie reminds him sharply. “It’s the South.” The warning rings hollow against his youthful vigor but carries a heavy burden of history for the contemporary audience.
At the Anacostia Community Museum, site of one Mosaic’s many community events, Bayeza performed a reading of the same scene and several others before opening the floor to discussion. Her knowing rendition of Till’s adolescent longings earned appreciative laughs, and the room hummed with agreement as she described the poetry threaded through Till’s history. Others testified to the grim personal significance of Till’s story, echoing Bayeza’s teenage awakening.
Similar events dot the calendar throughout the fall, forming the expansive outreach that Douglas sees as fundamental to his mission. “We want to be an organization that can bring people together, and that’s inherent in our name: Mosaic,” he explains. “Different people, different perspectives, coming together to create something beautiful.” It’s one of many signature projects Douglas is overseeing in his first full season, which also includes a multiyear oral history project focused on H Street NE and a series of infrastructural changes designed to make Mosaic a better place to work.
Like Bayeza, Douglas grew up seeing art and activism in unity with one another. “So much of The Till Trilogy is an opportunity not to forget, but also a call to action,” he says. “A call to not repeat those mistakes of the past, to reconsider our relationship to justice and to one another.” For Bayeza, The Till Trilogy arrives at a point when addressing those mistakes is vital to stemming the tide of White hostility that echoes Mississippi circa 1955. “I’m hoping this will alert us to what we’re up against,” she warns. “And then get us thinking creatively and positively about what we can do, what we need to do, and how we’re gonna do it.”
“Rebuilding the public square is what theater can do,” she adds. As its ambitions attest, Mosaic Theatre Company is running on that same conviction.
The Till Trilogy, written by Ifa Bayeza and directed by Talvin Wilks, runs in repertory Oct. 4 through Nov. 20 at Atlas Performing Arts Center. (The Ballad of Emmett Till opens Oct. 4; That Summer in Sumner opens Oct. 5; and Benevolence opens Oct. 6.) mosaictheatre.org. $50–$64.
Review by Jared Strange for the Washington City Paper.
Everyone knows King Lear, the volatile monarch who tries to divide his kingdom among his three daughters and loses it all in the process.
But seeing “Lear,” Marcus Gardley’s bold new adaptation of Shakespeare’s monumental tragedy, is enough to make you wonder whether you’ve ever really grasped the full impact of the original play.
Gardley lops off the “King” designation, retelling the story of the flawed title character in bracing contemporary terms, taking it out of the distant past and bringing it into the here and now.
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Well, definitely the here, and almost the now. In its world premiere production at the California Shakespeare Theater, which opened Wednesday at the company’s Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda, this “Lear” is set in San Francisco’s Fillmore District during the 1960s, a heyday for Black art, music and culture, but also a time when Black displacement was draining the lifeblood of neighborhoods throughout the region.
Lear’s (James A. Williams) descent into madness is artfully calibrated in Marcus Gardley’s new take on the Shakespeare tragedy, which he sets in San Francisco’s 1960s Fillmore District. (Photo courtesy Kevin Berne)
Gardley, an Obie-winning playwright and an Oakland native, knows both the region and Shakespeare’s play, and what he’s created in this sprawling hybrid is nothing short of dazzling. This is “King Lear,” to be sure, but with a contemporary, eyes-wide-open point of view: Like in his earlier plays, including the widely acclaimed “black odyssey,” Gardley writes the way we talk, with a deep understanding of character, language and history that resonates throughout the production.
Beautifully co-directed by Cal Shakes artistic director Eric Ting and Aurora Theatre Company’s associate artistic director Dawn Monique Williams, the sprawling three-hour, fifteen-minute production is often hilarious and ultimately deeply moving. Presented in partnership with the Oakland Theater Project and Play On Shakespeare, it’s a final triumph for Ting, who has announced that he’s leaving the company to relocate to New York.
Ting and Williams bring the play to life on multiple playing areas across the Bruns stage and throughout the multilevel San Francisco house that is the central feature of Tanya Orellana’s set design (artfully illuminated by Scott Bolman); the action often spills off the stage, with actors moving through the audience for entrances and exits. The production is dynamically paced, and music plays an essential part, with one of the house’s upstairs rooms occupied by composer-bassist Marcus Shelby and trombonist Scott Larson; their solos and duets supply the performance with a steady pulse.
Gardley’s script, like Shakespeare’s, is both humane and deeply poetic, and the Cal Shakes cast embodies it with thrilling intensity. This “Lear” is strongest where it counts, with James A. Williams in the title role of the imperious patriarch. Williams plays the part with power, intelligence and emotional clarity; he’s always attuned to the grasping machinations of the rapacious characters around him, and his command of Shakespeare’s language is complete. One word, a look or a single long breath from this actor expresses a lifetime, and his descent into madness is artfully calibrated.
In tune with Shelby’s music, the characters’ inner thoughts often come across like jazz riffs, with a winning mix of humor and menace expressed. Jomar Tagatac gives an intensely revealing performance as the evil Edmund, and Lear’s scheming daughters — Emma Van Lare’s Regan and Leontyne Mbele-Mbong’s Goneril — seethe with desire and murderous intent. Sam Jackson does a deft double-turn as Cordelia and Shakespeare’s Fool, here named the Comic. Dane Troy is an eloquent Edgar, and Cathleen Riddley is the picture of loyalty as Kent. Velina Brown, looking sensational in a long white gown (Lux Haac did the costumes) and perched above the main stage for much of the production, sings a series of soulful jazz tunes as the Black Queen. Michael J. Asberry’s Gloucester, Dov Hassan’s Cornwall and Kenny Scott’s Albany round out the cast.
Every “King Lear” examines ideas of identity, aging and legacy. But Gardley’s “Lear” takes Shakespeare’s themes one step further. In his adaptation, the play isn’t just about the title character’s sanity. It’s a meditation on the soul of a community.
Marcus Gardley’s “Lear” runs through Oct. 2 at Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda. Tickets, $35-$80, are available at https://calshakes.org/.
Review by Georgia Rowe for the Bay City News Foundation.
