Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre presents a series of original cast benefit readings, beginning January 19 with Gloria. The Pulitzer Prize finalist play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is available for viewing through January 24.
Directed by Evan Cabnet, the reading features original cast members Kyle Beltran, Catherine Combs, Michael Crane, Jennifer Kim, Jeanine Serralles, and Ryan Spahn.
Jacobs-Jenkins' play, seen at the Vineyard in 2015, follows an ambitious group of editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine, each of whom hopes for a starry life of letters and a book deal before they turn 30. When an ordinary workday becomes anything but, the stakes for who will get to tell their own story become higher than ever.
The series will continue in March with Cornelius Eady's Brutal Imagination, directed by Joe Morton. Morton and fellow original cast member Sally Murphy reunite for the play, which premiered at The Vineyard in 2002.
Brutal Imagination is based on Eady’s poem cycle exploring the 1994 incident in which Susan Smith, a white woman from South Carolina, claimed that an African-American man had kidnapped her children. The FBI searched for the man until Smith confessed the truth: She had invented the man and had drowned the children.
A third title will be announced at a later date. Proceeds support the artists and programs in the nonprofit theatre's 2020–2021 season. The readings are included with Vineyard Memberships. For streaming information and additional information, click here.
