Previews: PROFESSOR SYCORAX Staged Reading at Axial Theatre in Pleasantville

SAFEHOUSE: The Axial Playwrights series of readings of original plays by metro area playwrights will present Professor Sycorax written by multiple award-winning playwright, TV script writer and librettist Cheryl L. Davis (pictured) on Saturday, June 8, at 4 PM in Pleasantville, N.Y.

The play will be followed by a talk-back with the author led by Obie-winning playwright Susan Miller (Manhattan), Axial Artistic Director Cady McClain (NYC), an Emmy-winning actor and a director of stage and film, and Axial Associate Artistic Director Nate Flower (Ossining), also a director of stage and screen and a theater department professor at NYU.  The reading will be directed by Cady McClain.

Professor Sycorax tells the story of a middle-aged, Black woman Shakespeare professor who sees her academic island being taken over by a an ambitious white male professor. Sycorax takes its name from an unseen character, a vicious and powerful witch, in Shakespeare's The Tempest. 

Actors participating in the reading include: Donna James (Ossining), Teisha Hickman (Brooklyn), Quinn Warren (NYC), and Axial Ensemble member Dan Walworth (South Salem). Stage directions will be read by HM Acting Student Nadya Klimenko.

Suggested donation is $20; $10 for students or all may pay what they wish. The SAFEHOUSE reading will take place at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 8 Sunnyside Ave., Pleasantville, NY.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Cheryl Davis’s play Maid’s Door, produced at the Billie Holiday Theatre, received seven Audelco (Audience Development Committee, Inc.) awards, established to honor excellence in African American theatre in New York City, and was published in Holy Ground: The National Black Theatre Festival Anthology. Barnstormer, a musical with book and lyrics by Davis and music by award-winning composer Douglas J.Cohen, received a Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award under the Lark Play Development Center. She holds three Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards for daytime dramatic serials and has written for Law & Order: SVU.  Davis is the General Counsel for the Authors Guild.

ABOUT THE GUEST MODERATOR
Susan Miller is a two-time OBIE award winning playwright and Guggenheim Fellow whose work includes the critically acclaimed one-woman play, My Left Breast (Obie), which premiered in Louisville’s Humana Festival. Her play A Map of Doubt And Rescue won The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, as well as The Pinter Prize. A recipient of two NEA’s & a Rockefeller Grant, Miller received her first OBIE for Nasty Rumors And Final Remarks. She’s been produced at The Public Theatre, Second Stage, Naked Angels, New York Stage & Film, The Mark Taper Forum, with developmental support by The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Playwrights Center, among others.

ABOUT THE SAFEHOUSE PLAYWRIGHTS SERIES
The SAFEHOUSE program was created and developed by Axial Artistic Director Cady McClain, playwright and Artistic Director of Shades Repertory Theater Samuel Harps, Axial Associate Artistic Director/director Nate Flower, and playwright Evelyn Mertens.