Mosaic Theater Company Sets 2016-17 Workshop Series

Mosaic Theater Company of DC announces the lineup for its new ticketed workshop series as part of its 2016-17 season. The new series expands the company's artistic reach in its second year, allowing audience members a chance to dive deeper into the issues introduced in the mainstage season, while supporting artists with the resources to nurture urgent new works. The series is part of the new Reva and David Logan Foundation Community Engagement Initiative.

"With a new focus on play development, Mosaic is coming even more into its own," shares Founding Artistic Director Ari Roth, "demonstrating a commitment to nurturing new work and augmenting our thematic exploration with additional artistic offerings. It makes Season Two an even more exciting proposition for us; more exciting even than our historic inaugural season-to roll out a New Play Program, a new artistic partnership with neighboring Gallaudet University, along with a soon-to-be-announced accessibility initiative for our Deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons, all speak to the accelerating ambitions and capacities of our growing theater."

The workshop series begins with THE BLACK JEW THING by Stacey Rose (2015-16 Dramatists Guild Fellow) and Alexis Spiegel (MFA, Tisch School of the Arts), staged by Logan Vaughn (Igniting the Alabaster YOU!, Love Letters to a Dictator), running in conjunction with Mosaic's Season Two opener, Satchmo at the Waldorf. Next up is QUID PRO QUO, a provocative new play by Deaf writer and performer Garrett Zuercher (Steppenwolf's Tribes), produced as part of a new partnership with Gallaudet University, running in conjunction with Kirsten Greenidge's Milk Like Sugar. Coinciding with the world premiere of Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm's Hooded: Or Being Black for Dummies is ISM: A TRAGICOMEDY, a biting look at racism and sexism written by writer and performer Anu Yadav ('Capers, Meena's Dream) and staged by the founder of the innovative hip-hop performance group B-Fly Entertainment, Paige Hernandez. The workshop series concludes with OH, GOD, by late Israeli playwright Anat Gov, a darkly comedic and philosophical addition to the Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival, featuring four-time Helen Hayes Award winner Rick Foucheux as a clinically depressed God.

Below is the full workshop lineup for the 2016-17 season:

THE BLACK JEW THING

By Stacey Rose & Alexis Spiegel

Directed by Logan Vaughn

At the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Lang Theatre

September 25-26, 2016

Two playwrights, one Black, the other Jewish, test the boundaries of interracial friendship the only way they know how - by trying to write a play. Brutally honest, utterly absurd and deeply tender, this meta-theatrical experiment leaves nothing unsaid.

QUID PRO QUO

By Garrett Zuercher

November 14 (at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Lang Theatre)

November 20 (at Gallaudet University)

A play from the Deaf Community that flips the script, exploring what it's like to live in another person's shoes for a while. When Lindsay, a former college hookup, shows up at Lucas' apartment announcing that she's pregnant from a last encounter, he never expects what happens next: An unexplained feat of magic, as they literally "trade places." Lucas, who has been deaf, becomes hearing; Lindsay, who was hearing, becomes deaf. Though both can sign and Lindsay has Deaf relatives, their familiarity with Deaf Culture doesn't save them from the shock of their role reversals and its ensuing power shift as they both learn to navigate the world with their newly found gains and losses, each viewing a new perspective of hearing privilege. Throw into the mix a newborn daughter and conflicting philosophies on speaking versus signing, plus a surprise ending, and you're in for a roller coaster of a dramatic ride that leaves you thinking, seeing, and hearing differently.

ISM: A TRAGICOMEDY

By Anu Yadav

Directed by Paige Hernandez-Funn

At the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Sprenger Theatre

February 6-7, 2017

A series of dramatic and comedic sketches about identity, racism, sexism, economic crisis, body hair, and other light topics. Featuring perspectives of some women of the global majority (also known as women of 'color'). Warning: this show may cause discomfort and nausea to those with undiagnosed white male entitlement (among other chronic conditions). It also does not represent the views of all brown women who ever lived.

OH, GOD

By Anat Gov

Adaptation and translation by Guy Ben-Aharon

Featuring Rick Foucheux as God

At the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Sprenger Theatre

June 26-27, 2017

The late Anat Gov was known as Israel's Wendy Wasserstein, Nora Ephron, and Beth Henley rolled into one with warm-hearted comedy and social satire interwoven to create an edgy yet popularly-embraced body of work. In her gently veiled analogy, God comes knocking on the office door of a psychotherapist and single mother named Ella. Each have been battling low-grade depression. God's biggest concern stems from a fear that, despite his immense access to data - after all, He does know everything, as He amply demonstrates - He has been steadily losing his power. Perhaps a global do-over is in order, which would mean the eradication of all that presently exists. God wrestles with his own historic response to Job who suffered immensely for no good reason. He's compelled to look at more immediate examples of suffering and the cost of maintaining so much power in a world filled with inequality. Ella is experiencing her own challenges, and believing in God is just one of them. How will these two help each other? With a clash of quotes from Genesis and the Prophets, framed by a modern-day wit, two-time winner of the Israeli Theatre Award for Best Comedy Anat Gov brings a "funny...often brilliant text" (The Jerusalem Post) that forces us to grapple with the balance between power and humility.