PLAY-Reading Series

After a successful inaugural Reading Series in 2018, we're thrilled to announce the continuation of the series!

Throughout 2019, we'll bring scripts we're interested in hearing aloud, some killer actors to read each one, and snacks! All you need to bring is yourself, your ears, and any friends who also like listening to free plays.

2019 Play readings

MONDAY, JULY 15 at 7 p.m.

A Human Being Died That Night
by Nicholas Wright
directed by Michael French

As a clinical psychologist for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is tasked with interviewing Eugene de Kock, the ex-commander of a white supremacy unit sentenced to 212 years in prison for crimes against humanity. Pumla, a black woman, must work with De Kock as his psychologist, encouraging him to explore the darkest parts of his psyche—in order to seek his remorse, and offer him forgiveness. Based on the psychologist's memoirs, this savage, harrowing, and ultimately redemptive adaptation by Nicholas Wright is a singular plea for the possibility of compassion and a brilliant exploration of post-apartheid South Africa.

TICKETS

Totally free! Reserve them through the link below.

Sunday, January 27, 2019
LEAR
by Edward Bond

This darkly comic rewrite of Shakespeare's epic tragedy begins with with the titular character demanding the construction of a border wall.

Bond's masterpiece bends the rules of language and character to deliver a jarring sociopolitical message—and has also been cited as the most violent play in history...

Monday, February 25, 2019
Kiss of the Spider Woman
by Manuel Puig

Sometimes they talk all night long. In the still darkness of their cell, Molina re-weaves the glittering and fragile stories of the film he loves, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes all suffering bearable; Molina believes in the magic of love which makes all else endurable. Each has always been alone, and always - especially now - in danger of betrayal. But in cell 7 each surrenders to the other something of himself that he has never surrendered before.

LOCATION
All readings take place at:
The FLAX Building
1501 Martin Luther King Jr Way
Oakland, CA 94612

Monday, June 10, 2019
I Dream of Chang and Eng
by Philip Kan Gotanda

Their story is the stuff of legend. Chang and Eng Bunker, born as conjoined twins in Siam in the early 1800s, were brought to America to be exhibited as “freaks” in a traveling circus. In this dreamlike re-imagining of their lives, acclaimed Bay Area playwright Philip Kan Gotanda crafts a journey from a childhood in Siam to world stages and a plantation in antebellum America.

Wednesday, July 10
I Ain't Yo Uncle; The New Jack Revisionist Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Robert Alexander
directed by Kimberly Ridgeway

This play takes Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel and spins it on its ear. Old stereotypes get to meet their creator, as Uncle Tom, Topsy and Eliza put Harriet Beecher Stowe on trial for not only perpetuating negative stereotypes but also for failing to "get their story right." In this play these same stereotypes reinvent themselves, while the story gets updated from their own Afrocentric perspective in such a way that it not only retains the story's original power, but also draws sharp parallels on matters of race between yesterday and today. If Uncle Tom's Cabin was the novel that helped start the Civil War, I Ain't Yo' Uncle reminds us that the war for equality in America still continues.

2018 Readings

Monday, June 4, 2018
The Wind and the Breeze
by Nathan Alan Davis
"The Wind and the Breeze" explores the politics of place, the unspoken expectations of friendship and what happens when we choose to stand our ground on shifting sands.

Monday, June 11, 2018
Spill
by Leigh Fondakowski
"Spill" is based on over 200 hours of interviews collected in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill on April 20, 2010. This piece goes beyond the headlines to tell vivid personal stories from all sides of the country’s greatest environmental disaster.

Monday, June 18, 2018
Tiny Fires
by Aimee Suzara
Best friends Sugarpie and Trixie are young women live as scavengers at the edge of a landfill in the Philippines. Sugarpie dreams of escape, while Trixie hopes to remain in the place they call home.

Featuring Lauren Garcia (Sugarpie), Julie Kuwabara (Trixie), Lorenz Angelo Gonzales (Joe Garcia), Ogie Zulueta (Dagart), Nikki Meñez (Director), Dawn Kelley (stage directions).

Monday, June 25, 2018
Against the Hillside
by Sylvia Khoury
In this newly interconnected world, the aftershocks of each explosion spread far and wide, splintering families, stealing loved ones, and providing more questions than answers. In these wars fought at a distance, who suffers more: the observer or the observed?

Featuring Mohamad Shehata (Sayid), Dorian Lockett (Farid), Lisa Ramirez (Rheem), Abdulrahim Harara (Ahmed), Kevin Rebultan (Moussa), Max Forman-Mullin (Matt), Carla Gallardo (Erin), Dominick Palamenti  (Jared), Evan Feist (Anthony), Johnny Mercer (Stage Directions).

Sunday, July 29, 2018
good friday
by Kristiana Rae Colón
The ricochet of bullets breaks the hush of academia’s ivory halls and four students and a teacher are trapped in a classroom. Attempts to remain calm are shattered by each new wave of terror and tension coils to the point of asphyxia. good friday tackles millennnial feminism and the intersection of gun violence and sexual violence.