Faithful to the language of Charles Dickens’s novella and suffused with Christmas songs, A CHRISTMAS CAROL tells the story of the curmudgeonly miser, Ebeneezer Scrooge, and his miraculous transformation. The night before Christmas he is visited by four ghosts, who show him how his choices have affected those around him as well as himself and remind him of what is important in this world. Waking, after the visitations, in time for Christmas, Scrooge sets out to make things right and change not only his life, but those around him.
Genre: Historical / Period
The Cherry Orchard
Liúbov Ranyévskaya returns to her Russian estate after five years in Paris, following her son’s death. But her family is ridden with debt, and their home and beautiful cherry orchard will be auctioned off at the end of the summer. Lopákhin grew up on the estate, the child of former serfs, and has become a wealthy merchant. He suggests they build vacation homes where the orchard sits. The income would save them, but Liúbov and her brother won’t even consider it. They—like the cherry orchard—are a relic from another time: beautiful, but now fruitless. Summer comes to a close, and the Ranyévskayas must leave—with the sound of axes coming from the orchard.
Berta, Berta
After committing an unforgivable crime, Leroy is granted one final wish: a chance to make amends with his long-lost lover, Berta. Their reunion swells from a quarrelsome conjuring of the past to an impassioned plot to escape their impending fate.
Born With Teeth
An aging ruler, an oppressive police state, a restless polarized people seething with paranoia: it’s a dangerous time for poets. Two of them—the great Kit Marlowe and up-and-comer Will Shakespeare—meet in the back room of a pub to collaborate on a history play cycle, navigate the perils of art under a totalitarian regime, and flirt like young men with everything to lose. One of them may well be the death of the other.
“Oh Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!
And so I was, which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite, play the dog.”
—Henry VI, Part 3,
Shakespeare & Marlowe
The Ballad of Emmett Till
THE BALLAD OF EMMETT TILL dramatizes the final days of Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager who takes a fateful trip to Mississippi in the summer of 1955. It is the story of a quest, Emmett’s pursuit of happiness, of liberty and ultimately of life.
This is the first play in The Till Trilogy, a three-play cycle which includes BENEVOLENCE and THAT SUMMER IN SUMNER, exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till and the birth of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Antebellum
ANTEBELLUM focuses on themes of social injustice as it intercuts between two alternate stories throughout the play: one which takes place in Atlanta in 1939, the other in Germany in 1936. The Atlanta plot-line centers on a young Jewish couple living in the South who dress up in Civil War era attire to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind. In Berlin, a Third Reich officer at a Nazi death camp is in love with his prisoner, a Black, male cabaret performer, yet still allows him to be tortured.
That Summer in Sumner
THAT SUMMER IN SUMNER is the middle drama in The Till Trilogy, a three-play cycle exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till. While the first play, The Ballad of Emmett Till, is the story of the boy, That Summer in Sumner explores the 1955 trial of his killers. While drawing upon trial transcripts, contemporaneous news accounts, and the abundant photographic and media imaging, the play is not a docudrama, but my imagined interpretation of behind the scenes events from the perspective of three African American journalists covering the trial and from Emmett, himself, his ghost, his cipher, his Kah, coming to grips with what has happened to him.
This is the second play in The Till Trilogy, a three-play cycle which includes BENEVOLENCE and THE BALLAD OF EMMETT TILL, exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till and the birth of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Benevolence
BENEVOLENCE explores the impact of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Chicago youth Emmett Till on two families in the Mississippi Delta, one white (the family of his killers), one black (their neighbors). When the daily routine of a country storekeeper is disrupted by a group of buoyant teens, one of whom whistles at her, from that chance encounter, she is swept into a whirlwind of violence, prosecution, deceit and delusion that pursue her till the end of her days. In a nearby town, an auto mechanic and his wife struggle to hold their family together after his infidelity, but when he witnesses evidence of Till’s murder, the incident tears at the very fabric of their lives. Based on actual events, the third play in Bayeza’s THE TILL TRILOGY grapples with the enduring legacy of American racial violence through this intimate story of two women in quest of love and redemption.
Thirst
Thirst is set in the kitchen as Eugene O’Neill’s classic Long Day’s Journey Into Night simultaneously takes place in the living room. It is a story where passion, wit and beauty bubble to the surface as two Irish servant women and an American chauffeur pass that day in 1912 at the Tyrone’s Monte Cristo Cottage.
Little Women
This all-new musical, based upon Louisa May Alcott’s beloved 19th century novel, vividly brings to life the March family of Concord, Massachusetts. In a time of war and sacrifice, Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth, guided by their mother Marmee, grow from girls into women, through romance and courtship, illness and loss, loving and letting go. Kim Oler and Alison Hubbard’s moving Richard Rodgers Award-winning score, by turns funny and touching, is seamlessly matched by Sean Hartley’s wise and witty book. This is a LITTLE WOMEN like none you have ever seen or heard before.