Playwrights on Park Reading Series Continues on January 26, 2020

WEST HARTFORD, CT –Through this reading series, original plays and musicals from emerging and established playwrights are developed and produced. The next play of the 2019-20 season is A TO Z by Monica Raymond.

In 1968, when Annie, a white college student goes to tutor Zafiya at the juvenile detention center, neither woman realizes how important they will turn out to be to each other. But as Annie goes from concerned do-gooder to underground revolutionary, and Zafiya goes from incarcerated juvenile to lesbian commune dweller, they wrestle with their memories of each other; of Tyrone, Zafiya’s Black Panther brother, killed by the Feds; and of Coreena, Zafiya’s daughter, taken from her at birth. A TO Z follows the journey of these two women, from the murder of Fred Hampton to the election of Obama, and through all the letters of the alphabet.

About the Playwright: Monica Raymond is a writer currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her play THE OWL GIRL won the Jewish Play Project 2015 Boston and was deemed one of “ten best new Jewish plays of 2015.” OWL GIRL also won the Peacewriting Award, Castillo Theater prize, Clauder Gold Medal, and was nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. A TO Z received the Ruby Lloyd Apsey Award for “best play about race/ethnicity,” and was a finalist for the Jane Chambers Award, the ATHE award for playwriting, and Austin Playhouse Festival of New American Plays. Raymond’s short opera, PAPER OR PLASTIC (music Charles Turner) premiered at the American Repertory Theater’s Outside the Box Festival. Her plays have been produced/developed by the Huntington Theater (MA), Portland Stage (ME), Cleveland Public Theater, the University of Utah, Kennedy Center (DC), the Castillo Theater (NYC), Golden Thread (San Francisco), and many more. ABD Columbia, English. MFA Smith Theater/Playwriting.

Tickets are $10 each, and all seats must be reserved. Your ticket includes a reading of a new play by professional actors; a talk back following the reading with the playwright, cast, and director; and the opportunity for audience members to complete a response card pertaining to the play/musical.

SAVE THE DATES for the remainder of the 2019-20 Playwrights on Park Reading Series:

Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 7pm
Sunday, May 3, 2020 at 7pm
Sunday, July 12, 2020 at 7pm

For more information, call the Playhouse on Park box office at 860-523-5900 x10 or visit http://www.playhouseonpark.org/web2/playwrightsonpark.html. Playhouse on Park is located at 244 Park Rd. West Hartford, CT 06119.

Nancy Sasso Janis, writing theatre reviews since 2012 as a way to support local venues, posts well over 100 reviews each year. In 2016, her membership in the Connecticut Critics Circle began and her contributions of theatrical reviews, previews, and audition notices are posted not only in the Naugatuck Patch but also on the Patch sites closest to the venue. Follow the reviewer on her Facebook pages Nancy Sasso Janis: Theatre Reviewer and Connecticut Theatre Previews and on Twitter @nancysjanis417 Check out the NEW CCC Facebook page.

Click here to read about Naugatuck/Bethwood Patch Mayor Nancy Sasso Janis.