Playwrights Will Arbery (Plano), Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Last Night and the Night Before), Dave Harris (Everybody Black), and Stefanie Zadravec (Colony Collapse) will each present a staged reading of a new, full-length play developed during their 2018 residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm. The readings will be presented April 15–18 as part of SPACE's annual Working Farm Reading Series at Playwrights Horizons.
Arbery, Grays, Harris, and Zadravec were all part of SPACE's Working Farm program, a resident writers' group in which playwrights are given the time and space to develop new work on the not-for-profit's 130-acre property in Putnam County, New York. Now in its sixth year, the Working Farm is a fully subsidized, annual five-week residency for up to eight playwrights.
All readings are free and open to the public (registration is required). See the full schedule and play outlines below.
April 15 at 7 PM
Tambo & Bones
By Dave Harris
Tambo and Bones are two characters in a minstrel show. They soon come to realize that they are, in fact, just two characters in a minstrel show. This realization brings them great distress. All they want is some quarters and a nap. They decide that there is only one solution: they must find and kill the source of all their troubles. The play interrogates the intersection of race and capitalism, and the connection between pain, profit, and audience.
April 16 at 7 PM
Tomorrow Will Take Care of Itself
By Stefanie Zadravec
A climate scientist lands a plum position on Nauru, recording the island nation’s impending demise, but comes in contact with a group of forgotten refugees and an island whose complicated global history are fighting to get out.
April 17 at 7 PM
Untitled
By Donnetta Lavinia Grays
This long form poem with humor, heart, and music tells the story of a man standing before his town asking them for forgiveness after he has made a deal with a mysterious stranger on their behalf. The piece both engages and implicates the audience in determining the man’s fate.
April 18 at 7pm
You Hateful Things
By Will Arbery
Nicole, Crystal, and Lawrence have a white father. While they’re renovating his house, they discover Dad’s got a dude in a box. It’s wild & terrifying play about compartmentalization, hatred, and whiteness.
