DOUBLE BILL

Sorry Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea

Short story by Helen Oyeyemi (per an arrangement with The Wylie Agency)
Adapted & Directed by Lauren Joy Fraley*

Journey through interconnecting worlds in this adaptation of a short story from Helen Oyeyemi’s magical realism anthology, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. A teen girl with a peacock’s tail, an ex-shaman-turned-popstar, and others attempt to recover from disillusionment with methods ranging from public apologies and rehab to pet sitting a Siamese fighting fish inside a house of locks.

Featuring Music by: Mo Gholam Abolfazl, Brian Bacon, Lauren Joy Fraley
Performers: Mo Gholam Abolfazl, Ray Caspio, Assad Khaishgi, Akane Little, Brandon X Mc Swain, Brooke Myers, Jaytionna Wells
Photo by: Emily Liptow
Photo featuring Visual Art by: James Webb www.theotherjameswebb.tublr.com
Additional Graphics: Sequoia Bostick
Video Projections: Jes Mellen
Lighting Designer: Wes Calkin
Sound Designer: Christopher Hisey
Rehearsal Stage Manager: Andrew Aaron Valdez
*2018/2019 Joan Yellen Horvitz Director Fellow

Lauren Joy Fraley is CPT’s 2018/2019 Joan Yellen Horvitz Director Fellow. She has trained and performed at CPT since 2011, and has pursued additional physical theatre and movement training at LaMama Umbria, NaCl Theater, and Earthdance. Lauren co-created and composed original music for Noonday as part of CPT’s Test Flight Series, and has contributed to creation of artistic projects at Maelstrom Collaborative Arts (formerly Theater Ninjas), including Who We Used to Be (for which she was Assistant Director and co-composer), Don’t Wander Off, The Last Day, and the 2016 multimedia showcase, Broken Codes (which featured her original short solo work, Auxiliary). Lauren spent nearly 6 years as Outreach Program Coordinator with Playhouse Square, where she led school and family arts programming, including the “Classroom Connections” teaching artist ensemble. She has also performed in various world premiere performances at CPT including: Ancestra, Air Waves (Part Three of the Elements Cycle), Earth Plays (Part Two of the Elements Cycle), and The Secret Social, in collaboration with Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant. www.laurenjoyfraley.com

Helen Oyeyemi wrote her first novel, The Icarus Girl, while still at school studying at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. While studying social and political sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, two of her plays, Juniper’s Whitening and Victimese, were performed by fellow students to critical acclaim and subsequently published by Methuen. Helen Oyeymi’s novel White Is For Witching was a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award. In 2009, Oyeyemi was recognized as one of the women on Venus Zine’s “25 under 25” list. In 2013, she was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours won the PEN Open Book Award: for an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2016. www.helenoyeyemi.com

cleopatra boy

Conceived & Directed by Sherrine Azab & Jake Hooker with A Host of People

Inspired by the life, history, and legacy of Cleopatra, Cleopatra Boy is part pageant, part courtroom drama, and part lavish spectacle. The audience shape-shifts from spectator, to community member, to witness, as we collectively address the injustice of losing control of our own narratives in order to rethink and remake history.

Performers: Aja Salakastar Dier, Torri Lynn Frances, Morgan Hutson, Chris Jakob, Costa Kazaleh-Sirdenis, Eleni Theodora Zaharopoulos
Lighting Designer: Chantel Gaidica
Costume & Scenic Designer: Dorothy Melander-Dayton
Projection Designer: Jake Hooker
Dance Director: Maddy Rager
Contributing Writer: Kamelya Omayma Youssef
Pictured: Work-in-progress performance at Fury Factory Festival (San Francisco). Photo by Sherrine Azab.

A Host of People (AHOP) is a Detroit-based ensemble theatre company creating original work that celebrates complexity, imagination, and the synthesis of seemingly disparate elements—at once epic and intimate, political and personal, poetic and approachable. The ensemble creates aesthetically rigorous, intellectually challenging theatre that is also warm, welcoming, and inspiring to people from all walks of life. AHOP chooses their subject matter and themes very carefully with an eye to stories, topics, and aesthetic approaches that will be equally thrilling to the most adventurous theatre fans, as well as those with less exposure to the form. The company invites audiences into their art as they would guests into their home, whether it is in their house, on the street, in a garden, or in a theatre. www.ahostofpeople.org

The goal of Test Flight is to support new work and local/national artists.

CPT provides:
– The James Levin Theatre
– Basic production staff, stage management, box office support
– Marketing and advertising support

The artists provide the rest!

The writers, directors, actors, and designers selected for Test Flight dedicate themselves to creating new and original work, or stretching their artistic powers by working in new disciplines.

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