100 Years for Plays and Players
One of Philly’s oldest theatre venues celebrates its birthday with a nod to American history.
From April 4 to the 21, Plays and Players Theatre brings Lincoln to the stage in a bizarre way, with Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play. The story is about an African American gravedigger, also called the Foundling Father, who looks like the Great Man and lets people replicate the assassination of Abraham Lincoln for a small fee. However, when he gets lost in his replica of the Great Hole of History, his wife Lucy and son Brazil must come search for him.
Suzan-Lori Parks has been noted as one of the most influential playwrights of her time, with TIME magazine naming her one of its “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave” in 2002. Among her growing pile of awards, she became the first African American woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Topdog/ Underdog, which shares several themes from The America Play, with one of its main characters, Lincoln, also impersonating the famed president.
Plays and Players Theatre has also added world premieres of short plays written by local Philly playwrights, Quinn D. Eli and Kimmika L.H. Williams-Witherspoon. Appropriately titled “Other American Cousins,” they relate to the comedy that Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated, the two performances will be shown in rotation, serving as a sort of prologue to the headlining performance. As the shorts are meant to examine the current role of the US, each production may provide a new perspective on Suzan-Lori Parks’ work, assuring that each performance feels truly unlike its last.
The play will be performed in the Third Floor Skinner Studio, a black-box theater with an intimate space. This will be the last production of the season. It will also be an opportunity for a unique taste of history, both from the topics of the plays and the venue itself, which celebrated its 100th season last year.
