World Premiere

May 8 – June 29, 2024

Take a remarkable trip back in time to witness this haunting story of climate change, migration, and family in the days leading up to a calamitous dust storm in 1930s Texas.

IT IS APRIL 1935 IN THE DUST-RIDDLED PLAINS OF TEXAS, and a family farm is struggling to keep afloat amidst a mounting series of ecological disasters. As Jesús, a farm worker with a secret, arrives in their midst, stubborn Pa refuses to believe his land is no longer viable, young Sunny dreams of a new life in bountiful California, and Ma has mysterious visions of the future. As everyone seeks respite from an increasingly uninhabitable environment, this powerful, atmospheric world premiere manifests a Dust Bowl beyond the familiar lore and viscerally confronts humanity’s disregard for nature in the days leading up to the infamous storm known as Black Sunday.

Black Sunday was developed through TimeLine’s Playwrights Collective—joining Brett Neveu’s To Catch a Fish (2018); Tyla Abercrumbie’s Relentless (2022, Jeff Award for Outstanding New Work); and Will Allan’s Campaigns, Inc. (2022) to become the fourth play developed through the Collective to receive a full production. Black Sunday received its first public readings as part of TimeLine’s First Draft Playwrights Collective Festival in December 2021.

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Chicago Premiere

January 9 - March 17, 2019

A hopeful and moving story of loss, love, and the power of faith.

At the dawn of the millennium in a darkened church in northern Uganda, the daughter of American missionaries and a local teenage girl prepare to exchange vows in a secret, makeshift wedding ceremony. But when the brutality of the war zone around them encroaches on their fragile union, the two are faced with a reality they cannot escape. Confronting the religious and cultural roots of intolerance, Cardboard Piano explores violence and its aftermath, as well as the human capacity for hatred, forgiveness, and love.

Cardboard Piano premiered as a part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays in March 2016. The Louisville Courier-Journal called it “haunting,” writing that “this promising playwright’s story suggests a power in facing the damage done and picking up the pieces to inform each step forward.”


Cardboard Piano includes incidents of stage violence, gunshots, water-based theatrical haze, and flashing lights. If you would like more information, please call the Box Office.

 
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