Ophelia's Jump Theatre to Stage Regional Premiere of TRIBES

Ophelia's Jump Productions continues its 4th season with the highly anticipated regional premiere of Tribes by Nina Raine, directed by founding artistic director Beatrice Casagran. Tribes opens on June 3, 2016 and runs through June 12, 2016 at The Theatre Company Performing Arts Studio, 1400 N. Benson, Upland.

The story of a dysfunctional family, with an over-educated, arrogant father lording it over his wife and three adult children, "Tribes" underscores how we fail to communicate, fail to listen, fail to hear. Particularly within families.

Tribes is a thoughtful yet funny portrayal of how one family navigates the fact that their son Billy is deaf. Billy's unconventional family has tried to raise him as part of the hearing world and neglected to adopt American Sign Language (ASL) in their home. Now Billy has returned from university and is again struggling to integrate into his hearing family. When Billy meets Sylvia, a young woman who is becoming deaf and been raised by a deaf family, he finally discovers what it means to be heard. She teaches Billy sign language and exposes him to a whole new community of others who are deaf or going deaf. "Tribes" follows Billy's attempt to be a part of many worlds at once: his family's, Sylvia's, and the Deaf community, all while striving to find his own identity.