Crime or Emergency

by Sibyl Kempson

Performed by Sibyl Kempson and Mike Iveson

Two iconoclastic downtown performers entertain, tantalize, beguile, and finally threaten to break the elbows of our Aristotelian/Stanislavskian conceptions of contemporary American theatre and identity as we safely understand them in a new play by Sibyl Kempson. In other words:

Mike Iveson, with his demonic arrangements of the indigenous music of their native New Jersey, joins Kempson in a rapturous and obsessive melodrama of consciousness. Together they distill this 11-person play into a desperate and harried duet.

Part cabaret fiasco, part aesthetic holocaust, their dual dueling performance pits them in a life-or-death struggle for the right to devour the soul of the play.

Waaxe's Law

by Mary Kathryn Nagle

A dramatic retelling of the seminal and heartbreaking trial of Chief Standing Bear in Omaha, Nebraska in 1879, during which Judge Dundy became the first judge to declare Native Americans to be "persons" under federal law. Based on quotes found in historical accounts, interviews with elders of both the Northern and Southern Ponca tribes, as well as transcripts from the time period surrounding the trial, this play vividly brings to life the historic struggle between understanding and ignorance, compassion and prejudice, and vividly illustrates the challenges that our country faces today in its ongoing struggle for justice in the world.

Mountain Head

Short Plays by
Constance Congdon and Erik Ehn

An evening of two short works by renowned playwrights Constance Congdon and Erik Ehn. Congdon’s Dark Bridge Mountain: World’s One and Three portrays two brothers in the midst of a life shattering struggle with addiction, and two caveman-like creatures in an artificial jungle who debate what actions in life (if any) are necessary. Radio Elephant, one of Erik Ehn’s Saint Plays, is a mystical, folk tale in which a young girl in the Bronx explores the life of Saint Barbara.

Tuesday, June 1st @ 7:30 PM
Location: The Omaha Community Playhouse
6915 Cass St.

Turpentine Jake

by James E. Hurd Jr. and Linda Bannister

Turpentine Jake is a slice-of-life in the Florida Turpentine camps of the 1930’s, where Black workers were enslaved under “debt peonage” in the pine forests of Florida and Georgia with only their stories, songs, and magic to help them survive. Based on interviews with surviving centenarian turpentiners and the recollections of co-author James Hurd’s own Grandfather, Turpentine Jake is the true story of one turpentiner who escaped the camps. The play includes original work songs and folktales.

Wednesday, June 2nd @ 7:30 PM
Location: The Omaha Community Playhouse
6915 Cass St.

The Writer’s Voice

by David Lindsay-Abaire, Constance Congdon, and Erik Ehn

What are the stories behind the plays that are penned by our contemporary master artists? Where do their ideas come from? How do they come to fruition? What is the writer’s process? On this evening, master playwrights David Lindsay-Abaire, Constance Congdon, and Erik Ehn will read and discuss selections from their own award winning work with the audience.

Fuddy Meers

by David Lindsay-Abaire

Performed by Brigit St. Brigit Theatre Company

Claire is a woman who has a rare form of psychogenic amnesia that erases her memory whenever she goes to sleep. Every morning when she wakes up her life is an adventure, however, this morning will launch her on an adventure that even she will not forget. It's one harrowing and hilarious turn after another on this roller coaster ride through the day of an amnesiac trying to decipher her fractured life. This poignant and brutal new comedy traces one woman's attempt to regain her memory while surrounded by a curio-cabinet of alarmingly bizarre characters.

Rabbit Hole

by David Lindsay-Abaire

Performed by the BlueBarn Theatre

As improbably funny as it is heartbreaking, this story of a family in crisis won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Becca and Howie had the perfect life – a great marriage, a beautiful house, and a lovely son. But after a tragic accident, the couple faces the challenges of surviving great loss and making a life with the family that remains. Rabbit Hole charts their bittersweet search for comfort in the darkest of places...and for a path that will lead them back up into the light of day.