Play Reading
A national tragedy sets the stage as Lenora Waters finds herself about to become the first black female president of the United States amid cut-throat opposition and demons from her family’s past. Part political thriller, part jet-black satire, Red, White, Black and Blue examines the upside-down world of American politics and one woman’s struggle to secure her place at the top, without losing her humanity.

Play Reading
A crumbling family history. An orphaned piano prodigy left to wander the streets alone. His older brothers at violent ends over competing tales about their father’s tragic death. Set in 1957 Chicago, in the lofted annex of a forgotten church and on the steel girders of a skyscraper under construction, Drift offers a concussive and heart-wrenching glimpse of a family trying desperately to uncover who they are.

Play Reading
Minnie and Clifford devolve into a world of hilarious, but ultimately heartbreaking, minutiae as they navigate a blizzard, a dead son, a rat in the kitchen, and a half-decorated Christmas tree, hoping to find the last strains of dignity in their final days together. With delves into the contempt and comfort of two lives devoted to each other and entwined forever.

Play Reading
A gripping and darkly comic story of a death-row inmate and the closeted artist who’s painting his last meal. But he wants a stay of execution — not a final meal — setting in motion a social media frenzy and a series of life-altering events for the painter, the prison warden, and the man about to die. The Captives rattles the cages we find ourselves in and unflinchingly asks who or what is holding us there.

Lunch with the Artists at Leila Resturant

Play Reading with champagne toast immediately following
In the early 1950s, Gertrude Berg and Philip Loeb, the pioneering stars of television’s groundbreaking sitcom, The Goldbergs, heroically struggle to save their show, their careers, and their friendship in the face of McCarthyism, anti-Semitism, and the political climate of the country. Based on actual events, Ordinary Americans reveals the double-edged sword between speaking out and staying silent.