Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre is set to present a developmental lab production of Tori Sampson’s play This Land Was Made, directed by Whitney White (Blood Wedding), beginning July 26.
Set in a bar in Oakland in 1967, the new play looks at a time when the city was a powder keg of social activism ready to boil over into radical action. How will the patrons of Miss Trish’s bar react when the "seductive and explosive force of revolution walks through the door?"
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The Vineyard’s lab initiative allows a playwright and director to explore a work-in-progress on its feet in collaboration with a full creative team and include staging and design elements.
This Land Was Made will be presented through July 28 at the Vineyard Theatre.
The cast will be made up of James T. Alfred (Empire), Lauren E. Banks (War), McKinley Belcher III (Mercy Street), Jessica Frances Dukes (Is God Is), Sean Patrick Higgins (A Clockwork Orange), Julian Elijah Martinez (Alligator), Jon Orsini (Fish in the Dark), Carra Patterson (Jitney), Namir Smallwood (Pass Over), and Austin Smith (Hamilton).
The performance schedule follows: July 26 at 7 PM, July 27 at 4 PM, and July 28 at 3 PM and 8 PM. A panel discussion on social justice activism with special guest Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, will take place following the matinee performance on July 28.
Sampson's play If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka will debut at Playwrights Horizons in February 2019. She is a 2017–18 Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow in Minneapolis, the Kennedy Center’s 2016 Paula Vogel Playwright, and a recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
Limited seating to This Land Was Made for the general public will be available on a first-come, first-served basis by calling (212) 353-0303, emailing [email protected], or at Vineyardtheatre.org.