FESTIVAL WEEKEND ONLY!

Another Kind of Silence by L M Feldman

Balancing work, love and everything in between doesn’t come easily for two artistic couples living in Greece. Chap’s artwork lines the walls of her partner Ana’s café while Peter’s successful career as a composer overshadows his wife Evan’s struggle to write. When Evan and Chap spark an intimate friendship, the two couples and their four “shadow-souls” must confront the challenges of communication and the transformative nature of desire. A bilingual play unfurling simultaneously in English and American Sign Language, this breathtaking ensemble piece was a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and received Honorable Mentions from both The Kilroys List and the FEWW Prize. L M Feldman’s play Grace, or the Art of Climbing premiered with the DCPA Theatre Company in 2013.

L M Feldman is a freelance playwright, deviser, professor, and circus performer. She loves theatre that is brave, physical, honest and slightly impossible. Plays: Thrive, or What You Will; Another Kind of Silence; Amanuensis, or the Miltons; The Egg-Layers; Grace, or the Art of Climbing; and A People. Nominations: Wasserstein Prize, Blackburn Prize, Stavis Playwright Award, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, New York Innovative Theatre Award. Also: New Georges Affiliated Artist, InterAct Core Playwright, Orbiter 3. www.laurenfeldman.com

Please note: Another Kind of Silence will only be performed during Festival Weekend due to extra rehearsal time needed for its bilingual nature.

Hotter Than Egypt by Yussef El Guindi

No matter where you live, the ups and downs of married life are universal. For a middle-aged American couple traveling to Egypt on a business trip-slash-vacation, their relationship is put to the test when an old connection leads to new temptation. Drawing from the political, cultural and religious realities of living in the region, this fiery drama set in the heat of Cairo pits loyalty against attraction as its characters grapple with the ever-changing realities of staying committed to their partners. Middle East American Distinguished Playwright Award winner Yussef El Guindi specializes “in cultural and geographical displacement, from alienated couples to the promises and frustrations of immigration, and the ways people maneuver through foreignness and belonging” (Seattle Times).

Yussef El Guindi‘s most recent productions include People of the Book at ACT in Seattle, Language Rooms at Pony World Theater in Seattle and Broken Nose Theatre in Chicago, Hostages at Radial Theater Project in Seattle, and The Talented Ones at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland. Other productions: Threesome at Portland Center Stage, ACT and at 59E59 (winner of a Portland Drammy for Best Original Script, 2015.) Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama recently published “Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi”.

In Her Bones by Jessica Kahkoska

Colorado’s San Luis Valley is world-renowned for its beauty, but the area holds a deeper clandestine heritage: the legacy of Sephardic Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition five centuries ago. When Mia returns to the region for her grandmother’s funeral, she’s forced to confront a past that she is both fleeing and seeking out. As she looks back on family memories, another world creeps in — one of shadows, forgotten prayers, and secrets hiding right in plain sight. Unearth the complicated legacy of Crypto-Judaism in the Southwest through this unlikely alpine tale of faith, fear and how we pass on culture when written records are too dangerous to keep. Driven by a Colorado-based, oral history research process, Jessica Kahkoska’s play received the 2019 Powered by Off-Center Residency at the DCPA.

Jessica Kahkoska. Projects include Agent 355 (with Preston Max Allen, Chautauqua Theater Company, American Antiquarian Society Fellowship, Marion International Fellowship), The Death of Desert Rose (with Elliah Heifetz, Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship), Letters to the President (with Michael Bello, The Cooper Union), Wild Home: An American Odyssey (Notch Theatre Company). Her work has been additionally developed by the Drama League, Roundabout Theatre Company, Village Theatre, Southern Colorado Repertory Theatre, Joe’s Pub, Ars Nova and the American Music Theatre Project (AMTP). Graduate of Northwestern University. www.jessicakahkoska.com

Reclaiming One Star by Suzan Shown Harjo and Mary Kathryn Nagle

The truth proves stranger than fiction in the story behind the racist name of the football franchise the Washington R*dsk*ns. Team owners have long maintained that the name honors Native Americans because it pays homage to an early coach, allegedly a “full-blooded Sioux.” But when Tony One Star sets out to uncover the facts behind his granduncle’s life and mysterious death, he shatters the myth behind the mascot. Equal parts detective thriller and courtroom drama, DCPA commissioned playwright/lawyer Mary Kathryn Nagle and 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom winner and policy advocate Suzan Shown Harjo’s new work draws from their experiences and real-life legal intrigue to give you an insider’s look at the multifaceted case, including perspectives of attorneys defending the team’s name and the people they want to keep quiet about the slur.

Suzan Shown Harjo H/PH.D co-wrote My Father’s Bones. Past Drama & Literature Director, WBAI-FM, New York City, with background as radio/theatre producer, director, writer, actor. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2014), highest U.S. civilian honor. Guest Curator and Editor, award-winning Treaties exhibition and book, Nation to Nation, Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (2014-2021). A Cheyenne & Muscogee grandmother, she’s helped Native Peoples recover over a million acres of land, and led the landmark case against the disparaging sports slur, R*dsk*ns.

Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is also a partner at Pipestem Law, P.C., where she works to protect tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. Nagle is an alum of the 2013 Public Theater Emerging Writers Program. Productions include Miss Lead (Amerinda, 59E59), Fairly Traceable (Native Voices at the Autry), Sovereignty (Arena Stage), Manahatta (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Return to Niobrara (Rose Theater), and Crossing Mnisose (Portland Center Stage).

twenty50 by Tony Meneses

Andres Salazar is running for office. In an America where Latinos are now considered part of the racial majority, he has tough decisions to make. Will identifying himself as a Mexican American help or hinder him on Election Day? Will denying part of his identity be worth the potential political benefits?

As the campaign forces his mother and daughter to face their own questions of culture and identity, a mysterious stranger arrives. Searching for freedom and running from the law, his appearance jeopardizes everything the family holds dear.

On the brink of our upcoming presidential election, this suspenseful thriller grapples with the future consequences of our policies today and the true cost of the American dream.

Tony Meneses was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised in Albuquerque/Dallas. His plays include Guadalupe in the Guest Room and The Women of Padilla, which both had world premieres at Two River Theater. He’s an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Ars Nova Play Group, Sundance Institute Playwrights Retreat at Ucross, Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, Youngblood, and has been previously developed at the LARK Playwrights’ Week and the Berkeley Rep Ground Floor. He’s a two-time recipient of the Kennedy Center Latinx Playwriting Award, is published by Dramatists Play Service, and is currently under commission from the Denver Center and Two River Theater. Education: UT Austin, Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Juilliard.

You Lost Me by Bonnie Metzgar

In 1828, 17-year-old Ann Harvey saved 160 Irish people from a wreck off of Newfoundland’s Shipwreck Coast, making her an instant hero. Almost 200 years later, the Harvey family homestead has become the Shipwreck Inn, where present-day proprietress Ann Harvey attempts to leave her own mark (and get some new customers) with a tourist blog. Her nephew Joe-L, on the other hand, would do anything to leave his hometown and start a new life somewhere else.

Freely flow through time as unexpected guests and echoes of the past leave their indelible mark on the people that hold vigil along their remote and rocky shore. A memory house for all those lost at sea, this Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Festival finalist is a poetic, wistful and bright new drama that reminds us that every moment holds the opportunity to change everything.

Bonnie Metzgar is a playwright, director, dramaturg and producer who specializes in creating socially-provocative theatre works. From 2008-2013, Metzgar served as Artistic Director of About Face Theatre in Chicago, the largest theatre in the US dedicated to advancing the cultural dialogue on sexuality, politics and gender identity. Metzgar is the recipient of a 2018 MacDowell Colony fellowship, the Carl Djerassi Fellowship in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin, a 2013 NEA commission and she is a recent member of the Goodman Theatre’s resident Playwrights Unit. Her plays have been finalists for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Festival and selected for the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha.