MadLab Announces HAPPY PILLS

MadLab's Ohio premiere production of Happy Pills by Alyssa Cokinis will take place Fridays and Saturdays March 8th - March 23th, 2019, with a special preview performance on Thursday, March 7, at MadLab, 227 N. 3rd St., in Columbus. Admission is $18 for the general public, $15 for students and seniors and $13 for MadLab members. Tickets are available online at www.madlab.net.

After nuclear attacks on U.S. cities, happiness and other emotions can no longer be produced naturally by humans; their brain chemistry has been severely altered due to nuclear fallout. The Integrated Borders Union, a new government near former Washington, D.C., works with local drug manufacturers to produce chemically-created emotions; these pills are part of the mandatory Pill Program for all citizens residing in the IBU. To those wandering the wasteland, they must survive the terrain and hungry groups of hunters. We go back and forth in time between Fern's present, in which she resides in the Integrated Borders Union one year after the fallout, and Fern's past, or what happened to her on the road a few months directly after the fallout.

Alyssa Cokinis is a playwright, actor, and dramaturg from Iowa. Her one-act play "Cut from a Tree," about the Syrian refugee crisis, received a staged reading as part of the University of Iowa's Climate Narrative Project (2015). Her ten-minute plays "Savior" (2016) and "Terraform" (2017) received staged readings for the University of Iowa's Ten-Minute Play Festival. Happy Pills received its world premiere as an academic workshop production at the University of Iowa (January 2017). "Savior" was extended into a one-act produced by Run of the Mill Theatre Productions in Iowa City (December 2017). Her published poems, essays, and short plays can be found in The Light Ekphrastic, Ink, Ant vs. Whale, Beatdom, and The Translate Iowa Project's "Boundless." A 2017 graduate of the University of Iowa with BAs in Theatre Arts and English, Alyssa is the former research fellow of the International Writing Program's Between the Lines youth program, where she organized workshops centered around using the arts as a tool for peacemaking and conflict resolution. After serving as dramaturg for Iowa Summer Rep's 2017 production The Importance of Being Earnest, she moved across the Pacific to be a drama teacher in Nanjing, China, where she currently works and resides.

MadLab's production of Happy Pills is directed by Dallas Ray with assistance from Chase McCants, stage managed by Colleen Underwood, and features actors Audrey Marie Craddick as Fern, Abigail Worden as Kerouac, Kristi Miller Nunn as Rose, Matt Schlichting as Jon, Colleen Kochensparger as Kisa, Keith Jackson and Sean Taylor as The Enforcers, and voiceover by Jessica Ankrom

Designers:
Set - Kate Hawthorn
Lighting - Brendan Michna
Technical Director - Ryan Harrison
Sound -- Shane Stefanchik

MadLab is a non-profit organization that provides an artistic haven for the creation and experience of original works. For more information about events at MadLab, visit www.madlab.net. The Community Arts Fund of The Columbus Foundation, Greater Columbus Arts Council and Ohio Arts Council support MadLab throughout the year.