BY THE BOOK to Open O.W.I.'s Second Saturday Reading Series

O.W.I. (Bureau of Theatre), a resident company at the Boston Center for the Arts, begins its second Spring/Summer season of play readings at the Roslindale Branch of the Boston Public Library.

Each month from April to September O.W.I. will bring these free, public readings of new plays beginning on Saturday, April 8 with playwright Amy Merrill's BY THE BOOK, directed by Amy West.

BY THE BOOK is about a young immigrant's coming of age in late Twentieth Century America and the promise and limits of the America Dream. Set six months after Black Monday in 1987, recent immigrant George better find some new clients or he could be without a job in a story which signals the long, slow slide to the crash of 2008, twenty years later.

In May, as a participating project in Boston Arts Week, the company will read playwright Natalia Naman Temesgen's ACE: THE EUGENE BULLARD STORY, directed by Dawn Simmons.

At just 12 years old Eugene Bullard flees a Georgia lynch mob, falls in with a band of Gypsies, stows away on a German freighter and begins to earn a living as a boxer and vaudeville performer just as the First World War erupts across Europe. From the French Foreign Legion and heroism at the Battle of Verdun, to a glorious career as the world's first black fighter pilot and the Lafayette Escadrille, racism continues to follow and threaten Eugene's livelihood and dignity even as he continues to achieve incredible things.

As a Boston Arts Week project, the reading of ACE: THE EUGENE BULLARD STORY will be held on Saturday, May 6.

The remainder of the readings will take place on the regularly scheduled second Saturday of each month.All readings begin promptly at Noon at the Roslindale Branch of the Boston Public Library, 4246 Washington Street.

In July, O.W.I. will begin its 2017-'18 MainStage Season at the Boston Center of the Arts with Emmy nominated and AUDELCO award winning actor/playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb's, AMERICAN MOOR. Paul Kwamie Johnson directs.

AMERICAN MOOR examines the idea of who should direct Shakespeare's play. Mr. Cobb, alone on stage, dialogues with the white director speaking from on-high in the booth and who just doesn't seem to "get it". Their divergent views prompt fervent examination of the divide between black and white Americans.

Subsequent productions in the season include Lolita Chakrabarti's, RED VELVET, the little known true story of African-American actor Ira Aldridge, who builds an incredible reputation on the stages of London and Europe after replacing the ailing Edmond Keene in the role of Othello at Covent Garden in 1833.

O.W.I. will close its MainStage season with Shakespeare's Othello under the direction of Cliff Odle, in which a contemporary urban police force stands in for the army of Venice.

In addition to its three play MainStage season O.W.I. will offer SecondStage productions of Carson Kreitzer's, SELF DEFENSE, OR DEATH OF SOME SALESMEN under the direction of O.W.I. artistic associate Laura Detweiler and the World Premier of resident dramaturge and playwright Shaoul Rick Chason's, BERLIN.

IF YOU GO:

BY THE BOOK

Written by Amy Merrill

Directed by Amy West

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Noon-1:45 p.m.

Roslindale Branch of the Boston Public Library

4246 Washington St., Roslindale, Massachusetts 02131

Cast:

George - Owen Burke

Anna - Tess Degen

Miroslav - Dave Delillo

Sally - Liz Hartford

Ronni - Zele Avradopoulos

Rick - David Anderson

Peter - Robert LaMothe