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Current Season (2024-2025)

Poster for Trouble in Mind

Fall 2024

Trouble in Mind

by Alice Childress
Directed by Dara Malina
October 17-19, 2024

Director's Statement: 

A challenging play with a sense of humor and tragedy, Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress explores racism, sexism and hierarchy inside of a Broadway rehearsal room in 1957. 

Written in response to the lack of quality acting roles for Black women, Alice Childress set out to write a play featuring the story of a middle-aged Black actress, Wiletta Mayer. In Trouble in Mind, we see Wiletta navigating the injustices of the rehearsal process for the so-called “anti-lynching” drama, Chaos in Belleville, directed by Al Manners, a white director.

The play is set against the socio-political climate of the late 1950s referencing major events in the history of Civil Rights such as the Little Rock School Desegregation in 1957 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56. 

Famously, this play was set to be the first play written by a Black woman on Broadway. When Alice Childress refused to change the ending of her play to satisfy the white producers, the play did not make it to Broadway that year and did not have it’s Broadway debut until 2021. 

Just like Alice Childress, we see Wiletta risk a professional opportunity and challenge the system when she speaks her mind, and unveils the structure for what it really is…

In working with the company of Barnard students and professional artists, we are utilizing our rehearsal space as a laboratory for discussion and dramaturgical investigation while learning how to navigate this play together. We are asking, what does it mean to work on and present this play today at Barnard/Columbia in 2024?

 

Tickets

  • $12 general admission
  • $6 with BC/CUID

Performances

Three Sisters poster

Three Sisters

by Anton Chekhov; Translated by Paul Schmidt
Directed by Gisela Cardenas
November 21-23, 2024

Director's Statement
Three Sisters, or we will never go back to Moscow

Three Sisters is a play about fantasy and witnessing that fantasy shattered once we become aware of the natural progression of life to its end. As a doctor, Chekhov knew that there is only one thing in life common to us all: we are born, and every day, we walk towards our death. There are no second chances. Because of this, his work has frequently been mistakenly labeled as pessimistic. Quite different from such a vision, I stand with Chekohv in experiencing the natural human progression toward death as a vital clock reminding us of every moment's uniqueness. We must live aware of the present, aware and connected to others around us.

Dreams are essential to propel our actions and, consequently, life forward. They are a beacon to guide our choices. But what happens when those dreams become so solid that they end up being a mirage, arresting us into waiting for a stagnant image of the future? What happens when, in the name of that fantasy, we stop seeing the present, the people we cohabit with, and do not do something specific to attain or change that dream? What happens when that dream, the Moscow of our play, becomes an empty prayer that, like a slogan in a commercial, hangs over our present, obliterating any possibility of seeing where we are and how we can change?

Time in Three Sisters is simultaneously static and hectic. Life and its minutiae unfold as the acts go by, but the underlying status of its protagonists remains unchanged, only to shatter their desires in the last act. Left alone, with no home, no friends, and a series of failed decisions, our characters will remain on stage unarmed, clinging to the hope of understanding one day what happened.

Are we a community of avid thinkers living the life that belongs to us? Are we letting our dreams turn into rigid fantasies, to be shattered one day when the clock has gone around and is about to stop? We must remember that we are never going back to Moscow. Moscow is the present.

Doing Three Sisters with Barnard and Columbia students is a gift, not only because of the fabulous energy that working with more than twenty students between cast and crew brings but mostly because it is a privilege to explore these ideas in a world torn by the rising violence and ideological rigidity that obliterates the possibility of cohabiting with each other on the same stage.

I am deeply thankful first to my students, whose hours of work, questions, ideas, and research have made this show possible. Then, to the Design and Production team, who have put so much effort into making this show happen.  Enjoy the show!

Tickets

  • $12 general admission
  • $6 with BC/CUID

Performances

Spring 2025

Fox Toss

by Zuzanna Szadkowski
Directed by Alice Reagan
March 6-8, 2025


Director’s and Playwright’s Statement

For the fifth cycle of New Plays at Barnard, the Theatre department has commissioned actor and playwright Zuzanna Szadkowski (Barnard ‘01) to write a play for our students. Through two workshops in fall 2024 and several drafts, Zuzanna is writing an incredibly funny, heartbreaking, sometimes shocking play called Fox Toss. From the initial proposal: 

“Augustus the Strong (1670-1733) was a fabled king of Poland who proudly exhibited his Herculean strength by bending horseshoes with his bare hands and tossing live animals for distance. He was rumored to have sired 360 bastards with his many fantastic mistresses. He was a huge and hugely charismatic sex maniac with a soft spot for fine porcelain. In fact, he imprisoned a promising alchemist in the hopes that the man could divine a means of producing porcelain better than Chinese china. Augustus was sort of cool and really awful at the same time: a shitty dad to rival all shitty dads. Today is the day of the annual fox toss, and also the day his most indomitable bastard, Anna, comes knocking. 

The play asks: Does my family know me, see me, understand me? Am I my parents? What do I deserve from my loved ones? What am I willing to accept? And what does it mean to be self-made? This is a comedy about desperately wanting to have it out with what makes you up.”

Fox Toss has a big heart, and will make big demands: scenically, comedically, and emotionally. I’m thrilled students will have the opportunity to work on a new piece with a playwright in the rehearsal room. We’ll follow Zuzanna as she leads us to the distant past with this hilarious, whip smart play that actually feels too close for comfort.

 

Thesis Festival I

April 24-26, 2025

Thesis Festival II

May 2-3, 2025