All performances are at the Atlas Performing Arts Center

1333 H Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002

Readings are free and open to the public

 

 

24,7, 365

by Jennifer L. Nelson (more...)

directed by Kenyatta Rogers

Sunday, October 5th at 7:30 PM

 

They are the picture perfect model of African American success:  between them Johnnie Tyler and her brother Beau have five degrees from prestigious universities, six phone numbers and a family pedigree that reaches back to 19th Century Virginia. But what will ultimately make them happy? 24,7,365 follows these two siblings as they set off on a very civilized weekend camping trip for a birthday celebration and much needed rest and recuperation.

 

A Soft Escape

by Sherry Shepard-Massat (more...)

directed by Danielle A. Drakes

Sunday, October 12^th at 7:30 PM

 

Soft Escape  is a full-length stage play consisting of two separate plays (one an adaptation) making place in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  They are brought together by their depictions of two women from the same family. Melinda is a young mulatto girl escaping to Canada from slavery with her lover in 1858. Beverly Print, Melinda's great-great-great-great granddaughter, is a seventy-something year old Georgia housewife with a dying husband in 1998.  Melinda and Glen, her lover, drip with the desperation of youth; of new, young love.  The two have only the need for freedom to express it, while Beverly, tired, world-weary, at the end of her relationship, cannot say good-bye to Willie Sam, her husband of fifty years who is dying of kidney failure.

 

Holly Down in Heaven

by Kara Corthron (more...)

directed by Shirley Serotsky

Sunday, October 19th at 7:30 PM

 

Holly collects dolls.  Holly is a born-again Christian.  Holly is a fifteen-year-old, brainy, outspoken, spoiled, tyrannical brat.  And she won’t leave her basement.  She’s also pregnant.  In this quasi-comedy about a quasi-adult, a memorable teen is confronted with the speeding train of maturity and a host of life-changing choices without time to consider the consequences. Without much guidance from her well-meaning, but inept father or her less-than-bright boyfriend, can Holly’s real friends—her dolls—help her make the treacherous transition from child to adult or will the job require the touch of a special Homo sapien?