In 1839, Harriet Powell, a young, mixed-race, enslaved woman, slips away from a hotel in Syracuse, New York, and escapes from the white Southerner who owns her. With the aid of a worker at the hotel, a mysterious free black man named Thomas Leonard, Harriet finds temporary safe harbor in an attic room at the home of impassioned abolitionist Gerrit Smith. With the slave catchers in pursuit, Harriet spends the hours before her nighttime departure on the dangerous journey to Canada in the company of Smith’s young cousin Elizabeth Cady, an outspoken advocate for women’s equality. Confronted with new and difficult ideas about race, identity, and equality, and with confusion, fear, and desperation multiplying, Harriet is forced to the precipice of radical self-re-imagining and a reckoning with the heartrending cost of her freedom.
Cast Size: 4
Apostrophe
At a prominent private high school, in the wake of a problematic encounter between a legendary teacher and her star student, what’s “best” for the girls is a matter of debate. One father believes in the healing power of dialogue, while the Headmistress is hell-bent on protecting the vulnerable with silence. Meanwhile, two friends lurch toward adulthood, interrogating the absent, searching for healing, and asking the question: How can we protect ourselves from the people we love?
The Antichrist Cometh
THE ANTICHRIST COMETH is a comedy about a happily married man who discovers that he might be the Antichrist. Will he be able to enjoy a small dinner party with his loving wife, former college roommate, and his roommate’s devoutly religious fiancée? Or will their home-cooked meal usher in the Apocalypse?
Our Shrinking Shrinking World
Dr. Lyman Hidalgo-Nyquist is the only therapist in a faded New England mill town. His one remaining patient is Teddy, a down-on-his-luck cop, who lost his gun and can only get his job back by seeing a therapist. Another therapist shows up in town, the mysterious Dr. Michael Carver. The two therapists battle each other for the chance to save Teddy and his girlfriend through couples’ counseling with the fate of humanity in the balance.
Four Children
Four teenagers who lived thru genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, Sarajevo and the Holocaust tell their stories in the diaries they kept, curated to to convey the tragic similarities between them. Diary entries are read by the actors, accompanied by solo cello.
Adapted from When Broken Glass Floats by Chanrithy Him (Cambodia), The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak (Poland), My Childhood Under Fire: A Sarajevo Diary by Nadja Halilbegovich (Sarajevo) and To the Desert: Pages from My Diary by Vahram Dadrian (Armenia).
Endlings
On the Korean island of Man-Jae, three elderly haenyeos—sea women—spend their dying days diving into the ocean to harvest seafood. They have no heirs to their millennia-old way of life. Across the globe on the island of Manhattan, a Korean-Canadian playwright, twice an immigrant, spends her days wrestling with the expectation that she write “authentic” stories about her identity. But what, exactly, is her identity? And how can she write about it without selling her own skin?
Washington Square
This adaptation of Henry James’ WASHINGTON SQUARE centers on Catherine Sloper, a wealthy young woman raised in a house of grief by a father bitterly dead to love. Surrounded by a society and family who perceive her as plain and soft spoken, Catherine remains steadfastly committed to her forward-thinking optimism. When Morris Townsend, a young, mysterious suitor, makes a bid for her heart, Catherine is torn between following her instincts and heeding the warnings of her father and meddling aunt.
While the novel is set in the fashionable downtown of late 19th century New York City, Sharp’s radical interpretation strips away the excess of the time period to deeply focus on Catherine’s journey
to becoming her own person. This sparse, actor-focused design heightens the psychological underpinnings of the story, building tension as the play hurtles towards its inevitable conclusion.
Lot’s Wife
When struggling actor Tom Braddle discovers that his former fiancé has written a new play with a part for him, his hopes for reuniting are dashed by a realization that the play is all too autobiographical. Did Adam have a hand in the tragic death of his wife and child? A dizzying constellation of competing stories and interests swirl around the company and then – Adam disappears on opening night. A thriller, a comedy, a drama – a meditation on the impulse to make sense of tragedy in our lives through the theater.
Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B
An irreverent, darkly comic, modern take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth and sidekick. This fast-paced romp re-examines the world’s most famous detective story with a bold new feminist lens. In this highly theatrical, small-cast escapade, oddball female roommates Sherlock (yes, it’s also a girl’s name—wait, is it a girl’s name? Is it even a name?) Holmes & Joan Watson join forces to emerge from pandemic fog as a deeply codependent, quasi-dysfunctional Odd Couple adventure duo—solving mysteries and kicking butts, until they come face to face with a villain who seems to have all of the answers.
Glassheart
Beauty never showed up. After centuries under the curse, the Beast and his remaining magical servant (a hopelessly optimistic lamp) move into a shabby Chicago apartment, hoping for a lower cost of living and better luck with girls. In the threatening, impossible, completely ordinary world of paying rent and taking public transportation, is a happy ending even possible? A romantic tragicomedy about facing the witch in your head, and finding the wish in your heart.