the road weeps February 23rd at 3:00pm

By Marcus Gardley

Free

Sneak peak of the prequel to the road weeps, the well runs dry – coming to stages across the US in 2013-14.  Hear the play that started the story as a screening of a radio reading this February 23rd, 2013 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

The Latino Theater Comany is excited to partner with the University of South Florida’s School of Theatre and Dance, The Studio@ 620, WMNF, #Newplay TV, and the Lark Play Development Center to bring you a livestream of the radio reading of playwright Marcus Gardley’s work the rocks are gonna cry out on February 23, 2013.  This livestreaming event will include unstructured conversations with the playwright, and the reading by Tampa actors of the first act of the rocks are gonna cry out at 3pm in LATC’s Theater 2.

the rocks are gonna cry out is the first installment in a trilogy about the migration of Black Seminoles (African and Native People) from Florida to Oklahoma.  The play takes place in 1820s and 1830s Florida and traces the beginnings of a community that will be forced to migrate northwest to eventually settle in Wewoka, OK.  At its core, the play explores spiritualty, sexuality, and sacred stories within a group of people whose faith and identity are about to be put to the test.

This event is part of a multi-year journey for the Latino Theater Company with this project, which will culminate in the third national production of the second play in this beautiful trilogy the road weeps, the well runs dry in the Fall 2013 season.  In conjunction with the Lark Play Development Center in New York we join the Perseverance Theatre, the Pillsbury House Theatre, and the University of South Florida, in presenting this provocative and engaging play about the migration of Black Seminoles (African and Native American people) from Florida to Wewoka, OK – the first incorporated all black town.

Led by the Lark Play Development Center, Launching New Plays into the Repertoire is a national initiative to transform the American theater repertoire to reflect shifting demographics and emerging issues of local, national and global concern. This is accomplished by “creating a movement” around a single playwright’s vision by a consortium of five theaters that commit to developing and producing what many consider “risky” plays and to engage in local and national conversations about each play’s relevance and potential impact. The first three pilot rounds of this program, involving 12 individual theaters and three playwrights, will be completed by June 2014. In advance of each production, conversations around the play’s themes of migration, identity and education are facilitated locally by Donna Walker-Kuhne, the project’s community engagement consultant. This initiative is made possible with leadership support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with additional funding from The Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Marcus Gardley (playwright of the road weeps, the well runs dry) is a poet-playwright who was recently named a USA James Baldwin Fellow in 2012 and also won the 2011 PEN\ Laura Pels Award for an American Playwright in Mid-Career.  His most recent play every tongue confess premiered at the Arena Stage, starring Phylicia Rashad and directed by Kenny Leon. It was nominated for the Steinberg New Play Award.  His play, On The Levee, premiered at Lincoln Center and was nominated for 11 Audelco Awards including outstanding playwright. In 2008, he won the prestigious Helen Merril Award and a Kesselring honor. His play, …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, was produced at the Cutting Ball Theater and received both critical and audience acclaim; it was named one of the top ten plays in the Bay Area in 2010, and had two sold-out extensions.

His Bay Area plays This World in a Woman’s Hands (October 2009) and Love is a Dream House in Lorin (March 2007) have been hailed as the best in Bay Area theater. The latter was nominated for the National Critics Steinberg New Play Award.  Other produced plays include: dance of the holy ghost at Yale Repertory Theatre (now under a commercial Broadway option), (L)imitations of Life, at the Empty Space and like sun fallin’ in the mouth at the National Black Theatre Festival.

Gardley is the recipient of the SF Bay Area’s Gerbode Emerging Playwright Award, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Award, the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Scholarship, and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School and is a member of New Dramatists, The Dramatists Guild and the Lark Play Development Center. Gardley, a native of West Oakland, was recently chosen as one of 50 writers to watch by Dramatists Magazine.  He is also an Assistant Professor of African-American Theater and Playwriting at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.