GENEALOGY Comes to Broom Street Theater Next Month

Broom Street Theater and Knowledge Workings present a new play by Joe Queenan and TJ Elliott. The playwriting team's third and latest effort, Genealogy, explores how a shocking ancestral connection revealed during the taping of a reality podcast incites a series of surprising negotiations and unanticipated antics among its participants.

The host of "Chasing the Dead" is Glenn Weber, a former "influencer" and erstwhile MTV emcee who attempts to finesse his guests - two high-profile, straight married couples, one black and one white - while wrestling with the demands of unseen supervisors in the Control Room. When Mosiah Wilson, a former all-star pro football player and his wife, professor and activist Aaliyah Levin-Wilson, meet home-maker and former prosecutor, 'Muggs' Moriarty Hunt and her husband, Hamilton Hunt, a high-profile lawyer whose presumably illustrious family tree is under scrutiny, a power struggle ensues. Individual allegiances seem to sway and shift over culpability for the legacy of slavery and the debate over reparations.

One of America's finest - and funniest - cultural commentators and author of 12 books, long-time Wall Street Journal columnist Joe Queenan has co-authored four plays with T.J. Elliott: Alms, an Equity Showcase production directed by John Clay at TheaterLab in New York City (2019); Grudges directed by Dora Endre and performed on Zoom (2020); and Genealogy, opening November 5, 2021 at the Broom Street Theater in Madison Wisconsin, in a celebratory return to live theater.

For Director and Co-producer, Dana Pellebon, "The play, while a comedy, doesn't shy away from issues of history, trauma, and paths moving forward. We need more conversations on reparations. We need to voice the pain caused by slavery and how to repair the enormous damage of the current and past history of white supremacy. Art is an important outlet to start conversations. Genealogy does just that."

Genealogy stars Donavon Armbruster, Atticus Cain, Jamie England, Quanda Johnson, and Jackson Rosenberry.

Genealogy runs for three consecutive weekends:

November 5 & 6 - 8pm

November 11, 12, 13 - 8pm

November 14 - 4pm

November 18, 19, 20 - 8pm

Tickets available at: https://bstonline.org/home/

More information at www.knowledgeworkings.com and https://bstonline.org