A re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream weaving a conservative Christian community, a commune of Radical Queer Faeries, trailer park boys, and art school drop outs into a theatrical event for today.

The play follows the original, nearly scene for scene and launches straight into the action. Language-driven and embracing the setting of the Appalachian, Midsouthern states, we follow the lovers, here Sandra and Mia on their escape to the promise of Richmond and a more liberal community. Their christian community’s rejection of their partnership leads them to the woods where they collide with Duke and Hicks. Duke is roiling over his ex Melli’s choice to raise their son in a Radical Queer Faerie commune and with his buddy Hicks (and a knowledge of psychedelics) he’s planning a humiliation and revenge.

Amidst this, the Rude Mechanicals, here a performance art ensemble, are putting together a show for the Mayor’s wedding. The open call for acts assuring their first public audience - and an opportunity to launch their vision.

Music, dance, spectacle and the magic of the original seeps into a new play for contemporary audiences (and artists).

Persephone leans into a cave and is kidnapped by Hades. Maybe though she was seduced, she may have been ready to grow up, to run off with a lover. Demeter was so miserable that she stopped nourishing the earth, crops failed and people starved. Demeter pleads for the return of her daughter, Zeus agrees, but she’s already eaten food from the underworld. Zeus decrees her time will be spent. Six months above, six months below, and the Earth finds a balance of the seasons.

Demeter, not satisfied with a mere half a year, pursues Hades. She instigates her followers to mine the earth of its riches, its minerals and its fuel. The more they release, the more her power grows, the longer she can keep Persephone with her - and the longer summer reigns. Persephone, after centuries, was happy with her life, half the year with her doting husband, half with her mother. She pleads with her mother to relax - to let her go, she has a family down there with Hades. Demeter refuses. She spurs on developments to extract whatever can be extracted from the depths of the earth to wring the life from the rival for her daughter’s love. She succeeds. Oil, gas, fracking, her efforts destroy Hades and return Persephone to her mother. Demeter will keep the earth warm all year round - she will defy the gods and she will have her daughter with her forever.

A new myth for a hotter world.

The play opens in the parking lot of a disintegrating motel on the outskirt of the district. A group of agents put a plan in motion to locate Milla, a daughter of a dissident, reported to be dead. In one of the rooms she is being secretly kept by Clyde, one of the agents now charged with finding her. She is often addled from drug use, but is kindling the will to ask the questions no one is asking - why, who's orders, and where else could they go? The play pits coarse dialogue, familiar archetypes, and slapstick violence against heightened language and moments of serenity to ask serious questions about violence, individual agency and belief.

For Cara and Andrew it is the end of summer, the end of college, and the beginning of everything else but first they must say goodbye.


"It's the oldest story in the world—boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy loses girl—but it feels new again every time it happens to you. And as an audience member at Kristen Palmer's play Departures, you feel like it's happening to you all over again, because director Kyle Ancowitz's visceral production puts the audience in such intimate contact with the stage that you're (literally) trapped in the bedroom with a couple as they work out their relationship. The production makes physical the play's emotional subtext, its structural metaphors, in rich and powerful ways." - Loren Noveck, nytheater.com

"These two may speak less poetically than those star-crossed lovers, but there's something more immediate in their contemporarily beautiful words. By staying simple and true, with a fine cast and focused direction, Departures is a quiet marvel on its own; not meant to be compared with Shakespeare, but of fine caliber all the same." Aaron Riccio, Theater Talk's New Theater Corps

Meg's yoga studio is barely getting by, though she's committed to the local neighborhood and to the community she's gathered at her studio. Her partner, Frida wants to add Spin and maybe some of that car-pulling or whatever they do at the garage down the road. Meg creates a position for Amira, a young Syrian refugee, at the studio.

The convergence of worlds; the attempt to create a safe space; the dream of community and fulfilling lives and the limits of good intentions.

A visual artist grieves her deceased mother by drinking with her family, but the life she’s avoiding follows her home.

Mai, a talented grad student, drops out of school suddenly after her mother’s death. She leaves behind a fellowship, all her paintings and her long-term boyfriend, Fischer. Fischer seeks her out at her family’s home to find them drinking their sorrows away and Mai avoiding him and everything else from her former life.

The play develops through his visit, the family is fraying at the seams. Stressed by the loss of their mother who kept everyone in line and the financial pressures of her medical bills that Bill, Mai’s father, is refusing to pay on principle. This is putting their home at risk and driving a wedge between Mai and her sister Shelly, long jealous of her artist sisters status as the talented one. Bill’s drinking increases and Mai matches him as Fischer tries to move ahead with his life and Shelly fails to replace her mother as the voice of reason.

Bill’s drinking leads to a tragic accident which causes him to lose his home and forces a re-orientation of everyone in the family.

Set in rural Iowa, Sacrifice is a play about the broken heart of the mid-west. About a young girl named Emmie who is looking at the state of things and figuring out what must be done. About a corporate mentor with other motives. About how to get a mother back. About what needs to be sacrificed.