Southern Rep to Open Southern Premiere of Relativity by Cassandra Medley
Macbeth at the Gates to move to 2007-2008 Season
New Orleans—Southern Rep, in cooperation with Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project, will present the Southern Premiere of Cassandra Medley’s Relativity. The production will run May 30 through June 24, 2007, with performances on Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm.
Macbeth at the Gates, a Sandi Rhodes Production which was to premiere as part of the City Series, has been moved from its original dates of May 31 through July 1 to January 2008 due to director Roy Marsden being cast in a British television series.
Relativity, originally commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Science & Technology Project (EST/Sloan Project) has been funded by the EST/Sloan National Partnership for New Plays Mainstage Initative. Inaugurated in 1998, The EST/Sloan Project is designated to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. The play was initially produced at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York as part of the First Light Festival. It then received subsequent productions in San Francisco at the Magic Theatre and at St. Louis Black Rep.
Relativity explores provocative issues of race and science. Stem-cell research, bio-determinism, racial genetics and the validity of genome-politics are a few of the current controversial issues debated in Medley’s divisive world. Kalima, an African-American genetic researcher, whose activist parents founded the Melanin Project Institute, is forced to choose between the scientific theories of her parents versus the opposing view of her mentor. This triangle is further complicated by Kalima’s boyfriend, a fellow researcher at Johns Hopkins who is white. Kalima has been groomed to take over the Institute but now has proof that her father was beginning to doubt the validity of his theories.
The New York Times said, “Relativity…offers dandy fringe benefits to go along with the heady science: …two especially dazzling scenes…the play is so entertaining.”
San Francisco Chronicle noted, “Relativity is a full-fledged drama bristling with challenging ideas and emotional complexity. It's a brave play. Not only has Medley set her drama, as one character puts it, `on the cut of the cutting edge’ of research, but she's also grappling with the very touchy subject of reverse racism.”
A playwrighting professor at Sarah Lawrence College, Cassandra Medley’s plays include Ms. Mae, one of several individual sketches which comprise the Off-Broadway musical, A....My Name is Alice, which received the 1984 Outer Drama Critics Circle Award, and is still currently touring regional theatres and Europe. Ms. Medley’s work has been supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as receiving the New Professional Theatre Award, and a Marilyn Simpson Award.
Tickets for RELATIVITY are on sale now and range from $15-$30. Purchases can be made by phone at (504) 522-6545 or online through a secure server at www.southernrep.com.
