How do we approach the journey, when we don’t have a map?
So much of the last five months have felt like a visit to terra incognita – an unknown land that our emotional GPS doesn’t seem to recognize. While there are familiar landmarks, there are strange new realities that live alongside them, sometimes rendering indecipherable that which we thought we knew.
Trying to build a season of work for this constantly shifting time of pandemic, deep and wrenching civic unrest, and an America polarized on so many levels has been a struggle, honestly. And while we’ve chosen to delay announcing our 20-21 season for some obvious reasons – hello, Covid – we’ve also been figuring out how to be both a necessary town square for essential conversation AND a balm for our collectively battered souls.
Here’s the thing.
Still we are human. Still we love, we grieve, we rage and we commune with friends and family – okay, maybe via Zoom, but still – we grasp onto the humanness of one another as a kind of light for the darkness. And it is in that humanity and because of that humanity that we navigate forward, equally informed by hard truths and deep hope, and always in need of joy, dialogue, and heroes.
I’ve taken to thinking of the 52nd season as a play in three acts. While we have two works created particularly for our younger audiences, here’s the slate for us grown folk:
ACT ONE: THE JOY
A CHRISTMAS CAROL AT THE DRIVE IN: A LIVE RADIO PLAY and A VERY TERRY CHRISTMAS
Because we all need joy, we’ll be bringing you a brand new version of Charles Dickens’ tale of redemption – staged as a live radio play you’ll view from the socially distanced comfort of your car. And because she embodies joy every time she walks on a stage, we’ve asked Atlanta favorite Terry Burrell to create a holiday cabaret, for a night of music, mirth, and serious swing.
ACT TWO: THE DIALOGUE
HANDS UP and DATA
Wrestling honestly with the big ideas and the equally big challenges has always been the hallmark of our city. Written in the wake of the 2015 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, HANDS UP is a visceral and essential work of catalytic theatre that commands our attention and makes space for our passions. DATA, the winner of our Kendeda/National Graduate Playwriting Competition, is a taut and explosive expose of what happens when our personal data lands in the wrong hands.
ACT THREE: THE HEROES
ACCIDENTAL HEROES and TONI STONE
From a pair of film, television and Broadway legends, comes the story of two Hollywood legends who never quite saw that distinction coming. ACCIDENTAL HEROES tells the real life and wildly improbable story of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, set to original music from the equally legendary T Bone Burnett. TONI STONE, too, tells the story of an unexpected hero, the first woman to play professional baseball. In the days of the Negro Leagues and an America just beginning its civil rights journey, Toni was a leader, a hero, and a serious batter. (Just ask Satchel Paige.)