Shout into the Void: A Virtual Play Reading Festival began on October 12th, 2020. During the festival, a different classic play reading streamed live each Monday at 7:00pm EST and its recording was available through the following Friday, allowing audience members to choose when they watch. All tickets included a digital program with interviews, articles, and other supplementary materials to enhance the viewing experience.
Scheduled to be presented during the run-up to the 2020 election, each reading featured an enduring classic that explores power, politics, and prejudice in ways that provide penetrative contemporary insight.
Streamed Live - October 12 at 7:00pm EST.
Written in 1912 during the British feminist movement, Rutherford and Son is a sharp critique of the patriarchal Northern England industrial system. Tyrannical capitalist John Rutherford runs his family and his glass factory with an iron fist. As winter sets in and the business begins to falter, Rutherford systematically alienates both his children and his workers. When the dust settles, there is only his daughter-in-law Mary left to save the business and break the cycle of abuse. Named one of the “100 plays of the century” by the Royal National Theatre, Githa Sowerby's seldom-produced classic is a powerful exploration of class and gender expectations in revolutionary times.
Directed by EMILY TRASK
StreamED live - October 19 @ 7:00pm EST.
The festival continues with the 1886 Norwegian masterpiece Rosmersholm. It is the eve of a major election. The country is on the verge of upheaval over a battle between progress and tradition. The press will stop at nothing to influence the result. Challenged by friend and activist Rebecca West, John Rosmer is the last descendent of the Rosmer dynasty, and his family estate and private life become the epicenter of the national debate. A political thriller about love, privilege, and radicalism, Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm asks if our ideals and hopes for the future can escape our ghosts from the past.
Directed by Hassan Al Rawas
Streaming live - October 26 @ 7:00pm EST.
Up next is the heart-wrenching and timely Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White. The play chronicles the romance of an interracial couple, Julia and Herman, living in Charleston, South Carolina during the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918. Though they remain devoted to one another for a decade, they cannot avoid the harsh and sometimes deadly scorn from their separate worlds. After Jim Crow segregation and a contentious presidential election forces the two out of their private oasis, the couple must question whether it’s possible for a black woman and a white man to have an equal partnership in this moment, no matter how much they love each other. Fearless playwright, novelist, and actress Alice Childress asks questions about race, gender, and class division in this play with a level of honesty and compassion rare for her time.
Directed by Cheryl Lynn Bruce
Streaming live - November 2 @ 7:00pm
This is followed by Danton's Death. It is 1794 and the French Revolution has reached its climax. The monarchy has fallen and as the reign of terror covers the country in blood, George Jacques Danton begins to doubt and question the violence he and his movement has unleashed. When Danton challenges Maximilien Robespierre, the fellow revolutionaries and former friends become bitter foes, one calling for comprise, the other for ideological purity. The fate of France hangs in the balance as the two young leaders debate over the soul of their nation, the guillotine the loser’s reward. Written in just five weeks when the playwright was 22 years old, Georg Büchner created the “greatest political tragedy ever written” and its impact on the modern theatrical form is undebated.
