Workshops
Our Utopia
By Carlos-Zenen Trujillo
Directed by Jackie Apodaca
Dramaturg Lue Morgan Douthit
Lead sponsor Bag&Baggage Productions
The Swallowtail Players, The Aurora Canyon Community's Premier (and only) Theatre troupe invite you to a public reading of one of their most important texts, Our Utopia, written by the community's founder Aurora (transcribed by playwright Carlos-Zenen Trujillo). Drawing inspiration from OUR TOWN, the play asks big questions about belonging, community, and our place in this world.
This immersive new play is a commission of Bag&Baggage Productions, which is co-producing this developmental reading.
April 29 and 30, 2023
Side Effects May Include...
By Lisa Loomer
Directed by Vanessa Stalling
Lead sponsors Carol Fellows and Tim Bewley
This new play explores the pills we need to keep chasing the American Dream, at what can sometimes be an unthinkable cost. The readings will be followed by talkbacks about the play and the development process, which includes a week of workshopping the piece with Loomer, director Vanessa Stalling, dramaturg Tom Bryant, and the cast, including Amy Pietz, David Kelly, Erica Sullivan, Ethan Grabowski, and Ellen D. Williams.
March 25 and March 26, 2023
Main Stage Theatre at SOU, 491 S. Mountain Ave., Ashland
stains
By Sarah Cho
Directed by Lava Alapai
Dramaturg: Paul Adolphsen
Featuring: Nina Pamintuan, Annie Yim, Janet Song, Leta Dolores Marcellus, and Nicole Villavicencio Gonzalez
stains is a coming-of-age comedy about a teenage girl whose family sees her first period as a burden. An autobiographical play about growing up poor, female, and Korean American in Los Angeles, stains is in development as part of Moving Arts Theatre’s 2021 MADlab Playwriting Development Program and was selected to participate at the 2022 Great Plains Theatre Commons New Play Conference.
stains was performed July 9 & 10, 2022.
Berth Breach/Breech Birth
By Inda Craig-Galván
Directed by Kyle Haden
Lead sponsor: Donna Ritchie
Featuring: Christiana Clark, Desean K. Terry, Shaun Heard, Josie Seid, and Samantha Wynette Miller
During a house call for a pregnant mare, a veterinarian discovers an entire ship filled with enslaved people, inside the horse’s uterus. And one enslaved man sees her, too. Is she imagining it all? Can she get them out? And if she can, what happens to them then? What has happened to any of us? This play explores the world of a Black farming community in America and examines how cycles of birth, life, and death look much different to those of the African Diaspora.
Berth Breach/Breech Birth was performed on Saturday, April 24, and Sunday, April 25, 2021.
Lonesomes: Conrado and Paisley Blue
Two New Pieces Written In and For Isolation
By Octavio Solis
Directed by Jackie Apodaca
By popular demand, we are bringing back Lonesomes by Octavio Solis for an encore with the release of a newly recorded performance, available to stream this March 16 through 21! After a successful two-day run of the play in February where hundreds of audience members were able to see this powerful new work, we received many requests to make it available on demand.
NOTE: This play features mature themes and may not be appropriate for younger audiences.
Perseverance by Callie Kimball
Directed by Martine Kei Green-Rogers
In Perseverance, we meet Perseverance Turner, a Black school teacher, writer, and suffragist, determined to elevate her students above the circumstances in which they were born. One hundred years later, in the same fictional town of Hillcroft, Dawn Davis, a white school teacher, is running for office on a platform of education reform. As the two women’s stories intertwine, the ownership of history takes center stage.
We will be workshopping Perseverance the week of August 4. There will be two offerings open to members and invited guests to view parts of the play during the workshopping stage.
