Thesis Festival I
April 24-26, 2025
365 Days / 365 Plays
by Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Sahmaya Busby
On November 13, 2002, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks began 365 Days / 365 Plays, an anthology of plays written for each day of the calendar year. Coincidentally, I was born on that exact day. Together, this play and I entered and remain in a world of political and social instability and two shaken societies plagued by wars and injustices fought at home and abroad. We’ve become accustomed to tragedy in an unnatural manner, with devastating news passing our screens for maybe some hours before the next appears. In a society with droning sadness and grief, we often question the felt-yet-unseen impact that tragedy may have on us. Do we become accustomed to it and adopt it as a facet of life, or do we find ways to resist becoming one with it by insisting on our humanity? Throughout her literary canon, Parks emphasizes the role of American history in shaping who we are and how we respond to and live with each other.
Thursday, 4/24, 9pm
Friday, 4/25, 7pm
Saturday, 4/26, 8pm
Antigone
by Sophocles, adapted by Jean Anouilh, translated by Lewis Galantière
Directed by Mikayla Gold Benson
Thebes is in ruins—cursed, polluted, and shattered by civil war. In its aftermath, Antigone, living out her family’s polluted legacy, makes a choice and does not waver.
Antigone is an old story, but she herself is young. This play is about rebellion and grief. It exposes the moral and mortal tradeoffs of a world where no one truly wins. The consequences unfold in a single day, in a single forum with 7 entrances and 7 people. Antigone’s all-female cast arrives out of a yearning to witness and share the lamentations of this present moment.
We bring Antigone to you, honoring a moment to grieve for those unburied, as we are rightfully haunted by the mortalities of a global and local scale that precede the play as well as those ongoing amid this production’s performances. We are here together witnessing tragedy because we all play a part in it. The choices we make matter, as does the distance we place between ourselves and this story. The more we disengage from it, the more dangerous we become.
Thursday, 4/24, 7pm
Friday, 4/25, 8pm
Saturday, 4/26, 9pm
A People
by LM Feldman
Directed by Is Perlman
Dramaturgy by Olivia Shuman
A People opens on the cusp of a world about to begin. It’s mostly empty, fairly dark, and largely silent. A gust of wind blows, and with it—whispers of music and prayer. From silence and darkness a group of people is formed, composed of fire, music, dance, and cloth. These people emerge buzzing with vitality—they stomp, sing wordless melodies, and hold tight onto each other’s hands as a shared lifeforce pulses in them and through them. Another gust of wind scatters them across the globe, dispersing them like pollen and leaving them humming fragments of melodies they once knew by heart. They spend the next 4,000 or so years trying to figure out how to translate this lifeforce into rituals and texts. They call it Judaism. They connect. They argue. They pray and they reckon and they denounce and they dance and sing and light candles. The cracks begin to show, but so does the alchemy of human touch and song.
Together, we will ask: how can we both honor and challenge the histories and practices that we inherit? How do we tell stories about our ancestors, and what do we ask of them? And what possibilities of radical change and becoming do each of our bodies hold?
Thursday, 4/24, 8pm
Friday, 4/25, 9pm
Saturday, 4/26, 7pm
Design, performances, and stage management by Barnard and Columbia Students
Festival Directing Advisor Shannon Sindelar
Festival Design Advisor Sandra Goldmark
Lighting Design Advisor Lucrecia Briceño
Sound Design Advisor Daniel Baker
Director of Production Mike Banta
Costume Shop Manager Kara Feely
Technical Director Greg Winkler
Production Stage Manager Jordan Baptiste
Minor Latham Playhouse
118 Milbank Hall