The Human Race Announces 'New Era Of Play Development'

The death of long-time Human Race Theatre Artistic Director Marsha Hanna has led to life for a new program of play development.

Each year, The Human Race produces an in-school tour, operated in conjunction with the Muse Machine. This year, the tour show is not only called Change, it represents a change in what we do.

The tour, a part of the Theatre in Context program, always ties in to a Human Race Loft Series production...one about Shakespeare's comedians when we performed Twelfth Night, one about Mark Twain when we staged Big River, and so on. In the past, these school-period-length shows have been written in-house, by someone attached either to Muse or to The Race.

This year, though, The Human Race commissioned a work by an outside playwright, an action made possible by the Marsha Hanna Memorial Fund. Hanna had long wanted the company to branch out in its development efforts, to work with new plays in the way which earned it a national reputation for development of new musicals. After her death in January, the Memorial Fund was created to pursue that goal, and Change is the first work created from that fund.

The Race and Muse wanted the Theatre in Context to be tied to Caroline, or Change, which is about an African-American maid in a Jewish household in Louisiana in 1963, and which will be presented as part of The Eichelberger Loft Season of The Human Race in November. To create the work, HRTC enlisted Michael Slade, a prolific and highly-regarded playwright, librettist, TV writer and children's author.

Slade was part of the creative team for a 2008 Human Race Musical Theatre Workshop show, then called The Black Crook Project, about the process that led to the first American musical. That work has since become a full-fledged musical, now called And The Curtain Rises.

For Change, Michael writes about three major changes in America in the last half century. In the first segment, three high school seniors look at the Kennedy assassination and the civil rights movement at the time of Caroline. In the second, three middle school students discuss 9/11. In the third, two young wives cover the election of our first African-American president.

The show, with cast members Maddie Casto, David Kabbes and Marva Williams, directed by Heather Powell, will tour high and middle schools throughout the Miami Valley this fall. Non-Muse Machine schools wishing to book the tour should call Kryss Northrup at (937) 461-3823, extension 3116.

Theatre in Context is sponsored by the DP&L Foundation, Emerson Climate Technologies, Key Bank, the Vectren Foundation and Target.

http://www.humanracetheatre.org/

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