Productions & Events featuring Tyla Abercrumbie

Relentless is now playing at Goodman Theatre! Learn more …

In this world premiere play developed through TimeLine’s Playwrights Collective, Tyla Abercrumbie weaves a mother’s past with her daughters’ present in a centuries-spanning tale of family, legacy, and progress.

Set in the Black Victorian era, Relentless looks at the deep personal secrets we keep to protect the ones we love most. The year is 1919. After the death of their mother, two sisters come home to Philadelphia to settle her estate. Annelle is a happy socialite desperate to return to the safe illusion of a perfect life with her husband in Boston. Janet is a single, professional nurse, determined to change history and propel Black women to a place of prominence and respect. After discovering diaries left by their late mother, they find themselves confronted with a woman they never really knew, exposing buried truths from the past that are chillingly, explosively Relentless.

Relentless is the second play developed through TimeLine’s Playwrights Collective to receive a full production. The play received its first public reading as part of our inaugural First Draft Playwrights Collective Festival in December 2018.

PLEASE NOTE: Proof of vaccination and mask-wearing are required to attend.

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Although TimeLine’s production of Relentless has been postponed, we can still start the conversation!

Set in 1919, Relentless weaves a mother’s past with her daughters’ present in a complicated tale of family, legacy, and progress. Its characters have weathered a great deal—revolution, change, even a pandemic—in ways that we see mirrored in our present day. This live virtual event featured playwright Tyla Abercrumbie, director Ron OJ Parson, and guest panelist La Donna L. Forsgren (Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame) in a conversation moderated by dramaturg Khalid Long. The evening also include scenes from the play performed by cast members Ayanna Bria Bakari, Travis Delgado, and Marguerite Genard.

This FREE & one-night-only event was presented live on YouTube September 24, 2020. An edited version of this program (without the scenes from the play) is available to view now.

Watch the Event

“We all got sadness. But I like to turn mine into fire, baby. What you do with yours?”

A dynamic and jazz-infused drama about what’s at stake when building a better future. In Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood in 1949, a gifted trumpeter and troubled owner of the Paradise jazz nightclub is contemplating a buyout offer for the city’s urban renewal plan. As the inhabitants of the famed but faltering jazz club ponder their options and dream of a better life, they must decide whether to fight to save what’s theirs or risk it all for a chance at redemption.

This latest from Dominique Morisseau’s widely acclaimed cycle of plays about Detroit once again proves why she’s one of America’s most urgent playwrights.

PLEASE NOTE: Peanuts will be consumed onstage during the show, and the production includes scenes of violence, multiple gunshots and strong language, as well as the use of e-cigarettes and haze.

This powerful drama “changed American theater forever” (The New York Times) and resonates across generations — recently serving as inspiration for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park. An African-American family living in a crowded apartment on Chicago’s South Side during the 1950s believes that a better life is just around the corner. But they are challenged when their plan to buy a home in the Clybourne Park neighborhood is thwarted by racial intolerance. This award-winning play celebrates faith, courage and the human spirit, even as it spotlights divides that still plague Chicago more than 50 years after its premiere.