Staged readings, play delve into social issues, Detroit history
Act I: Staged readings explore social issues
Both Riverwalk Theatre and Lansing Community College will host staged readings this month.
On Oct. 8, Riverwalk invites audiences to a staged reading of a new work titled “Social Distancing; or How to Kill a Party.”
The comedy is by Roger Rochowiak, a local playwright who has had several of his works come to life on the Riverwalk stage through the decades. This one centers on family relationships and expectations and how they are challenged by pandemic restrictions.
Under this performance model, one that was used three years ago with Rochowiak’s script “Slip and Fall,” local actors practice the script all day in preparation for its reading at 7 p.m. Tom Ferris directs.
The show will be recorded for promotional purposes to show to other theaters considering a full staging of this work. It is one of the reasons Riverwalk wants an audience — the reactions will be an important part of the video.
Actors participating in the reading include Jane Zussman, Adam Carlson, Rachel Daugherty, Jeff Magnuson, Bob Murrell, Lanie Plunkett, Amy Rickett and Andrew Stewart.
Audience members are encouraged to make a donation in exchange for their ticket and they will be required to wear masks.
From Oct. 13-15, Director Paige Tufford will lead a staged reading in LCC’s Black Box Theatre, 1422 Gannon Building at 8 p.m. The show is “Queering History” by Maggie Keenan-Bolger. The script explores how the world might be different if LGBT+ history was taught in schools.
The play was written in collaboration with LGBTQIA homeless youth. In it, Emma, a quiet, queer high school student turns her high school history class upside down when it is visited by her "Fairy Queen Godmother,” Kinsey Scale and his Gaggle of Historical Gays.
Molly Sullivan plays Emma and is joined by actors Bob Fluke, Vahlaree Aiden Kakela, Brandon Dinh, Dillon Smith, Lee Flowers, Olivia Hines and Jamerra Kates. They play characters with such names as Rude Paul, David Hero-To, Walt Whitwoman, Manderson Cooper, Oscar Wilder, David B. Hate, Ms. Audre Lorde, Ellen Degenerate and Rachel Mad as Hell.
Act II: MSU explores history of oldest Detroit neighborhood
Michigan State University’s Department of Theater is opening its first mainstage production of a season titled “Community, Community, Community.”
The season launches with a unique look at a Michigan community. “Corktown, or Through the Valley of Dry Bones” runs Oct. 14-23 at the Pasant Theatre. Corktown is a historic district west of downtown Detroit, the oldest surviving neighborhood in Detroit. It is now billed as a trendy, youthful neighborhood filled with industrial-chic bars and hip breweries.
Playwright Jeff Augustin takes the audience on a journey of where the neighborhood came from and where it is going. Tour guide Jackee, “a fabulous 14-year-old boy,” shows the audience around Corktown in a tour that lasts from 2007 to 2034. Showing both urban blight and gentrified renaissance, it chronicles the life cycle of a city and its residents.
The show is filled with gospel music, graffiti and organic coffee. It sets out to reveal that even when the graffiti is painted over and the streets become safer, there is a beating heart in a place’s history that can’t be erased.
The MSU production is being guest directed by scholar, writer and performer Chamara Jewel Kwakye, who is an academic specialist in the Department of African American and African Studies at MSU.
The play contains themes of death, dying and the afterlife; alcohol use; profanity, derogatory language, including the use of homophobic and ableist slurs.
Encore!
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra with violinist Nicola Benedetti performs at Wharton Center’s Cobb Great Hall on Oct. 18. Performance starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are from $33.
Homegrown Productions is producing “The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940,” billed as a little music, a little mayhem and a murder here or there. The shows will be Oct. 7, 9, 15 and 16 at the Wilson Center Auditorium in St. Johns.
Kitty Donohoe, singer, songwriter, performer, composer, will be performing with the Ten Pound Fiddle at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 14 at the University United Methodist Church in East Lansing. Tickets are $18 for members, $20 for non-members.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Riverwalk, Lansing Community College, MSU Theater Department events
