convergence-continuum's 2020 Season:
Fight Back
GIDION'S KNOT
by Johnna Adams
Mar 20-Apr 11, directed by Amy Bistok
Over the course of a parent/teacher conference, a grieving mother and an emotionally overwhelmed primary school teacher have a fraught conversation about the tragic suicide of the mother's son, Gidion. Gidion may have been bullied severely—or he may have been an abuser. As his story is slowly uncovered, the women try to reconstruct a satisfying explanation for Gidion's act and come to terms with excruciating feelings of culpability.
ANGRY FAGS
by Topher Payne
May 15-Jun 6, directed by Scott Zolkowski
Bennett is really trying to keep it together right now. He broke up with his boyfriend and moved in with his best friend, Cooper. It’s election season, and he’s the speechwriter for Georgia’s only gay state senator, who’s engaged in a bloody campaign against a conservative darling. Then Bennett’s ex is attacked in the parking lot of a gay bar. Bennett and Cooper are informed that the assault can’t be classified as a hate crime – because in Georgia, hate crimes against homosexuals don’t legally exist. Their frustration and fear eventually turn to rage as they realize “acceptance” simply isn’t enough. They’re still living in a society that relegates them to second-class status. They’re not respected. They’re not feared. It’s time for that to change.
Jul 10-Aug 1, directed by India Nicole Burton
A collage-and-meta exploration wherein a modern-day black graduate student finds himself and his 189-yr-old grandfather transported back to slavery times and the Nat Turner rebellion. Insurrection is a work unafraid to utterly confound most traditional narrative assumptions, and in a surreal version of history also manages to address contemporary police violence against African-Americans, to explore who has the right to tell whose story, to look critically at African-American attitudes toward homosexuality, and to explore how different generations adhere to different rules.
NEIGHBORHOOD 3: REQUISITON OF DOOM
by Jennifer Haley
Aug 28-Sep 19, directed by Cory Molner
In a suburban subdivision with identical houses, parents find their teenagers addicted to an online horror video game. The game’s setting? A subdivision with identical houses. The goal? Smash through an army of zombies to escape the neighborhood for good. But as the line blurs between virtual and reality, both parents and players realize that fear has a life of its own.
FAILURE: A LOVE STORY
by Phillip Dawkins
Oct 15-31, directed by Geoffrey Hoffman
. By the end of 1928, all three Fail sisters will be dead -- expiring in reverse order, youngest to oldest, from blunt object to the head, disappearance, and finally consumption. Tuneful songs, and a whimsical chorus follow the story of Nelly, Jenny June, and Gerty as they live out their lives above the family clock repair shop near the Chicago River, before their time unexpectedly runs out. A magical, musical fable where, in the end, the power of love is far greater than any individual's successes or failures.
THE MOST FABULOUS STORY EVER TOLD
by Paul Rudnick
Dec 3-19, directed by Clyde Simon
A stage manager, headset and prompt book at hand, brings the house lights to half, then dark, and cues the creation of the world. Throughout the play, she's in control of everything. In other words, she's either God, or she thinks she is. Act One recounts the major episodes of the Old Testament, only with a twist: Instead of Adam and Eve, our lead characters are Adam and Steve, and Jane and Mabel, a lesbian couple with whom they decide to start civilization (procreation proves to be a provocative challenge). Act One covers the Garden of Eden, an ark, a visit with a highly rambunctious Pharaoh and finally even the Nativity. Along the way, Mabel and Adam invent God, but Jane and Steve are skeptical. This brings about the Flood, during which Steve has a brief affair with a rhinoceros and invents infidelity. No longer blissful, Adam and Steve break up only to be reunited as two of the wise men at the Nativity. Act Two jumps to modern day Manhattan. Adam and Steve are together again, and Steve is HIV positive. It's Christmas Eve, and Jane is nine months pregnant even though she always thought of herself as the butch one. The two women want to marry and want Adam and Steve to join them in the ceremony. A wheelchair-bound, Jewish lesbian Rabbi from cable access TV arrives to officiate. The ceremony is interrupted as Jane gives birth, and Steve confides to Adam that his medication isn't working and that he'll probably not survive much longer. Bound by their long life together, and the miracle of birth they've just witnessed, the two men comfort each other even though they know their remaining time together will be short.
