Photo credit: Nick Adams / Florida Repertory Theatre
Pictured: Florida Repertory is the first of 11 theaters premiering Cefaly’s current play, “Alabaster,” nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama by the Florida Repertory Theater, throughout this year. The production stars Theatre UAB alumnae Carolyn Messina (pictured right as Weezy) and Rachel Burttram (pictured left) as the lead character June; both actors have received critical acclaim for their performances. Award-winning Alabama playwright Audrey Cefaly will work with students and performers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham ahead of the world premiere production there of her works.
Cefaly’s visit is part of the Dramatist Guild Foundation’s Traveling Masters series, in conjunction with the world premiere production by the UAB College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Theatre of Cefaly’s “Tell Me Something Good” from March 9-13.
During her visit, Cefaly will hold two master classes on Friday, Feb. 14: one on subtext for Theatre UAB students and a second master class, open to the public, titled “Audrey Cefaly’s Playwriting Vocabulary,” at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center. Admission is free.
“Tell Me Something Good” is a collection of short plays whose tenderly crafted stories of human ache and longing examine the most ordinary and disparate of characters in high-stakes moments of self-doubt; some life-threatening, some bordering on life-ending, all life-affirming.
Cefaly’s current play, “Alabaster,” nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in drama by the Florida Repertory Theater, is part of a rolling world premiere from the National New Play Network, and Florida Rep is the first of 11 theaters premiering this play throughout this year. The production stars Theatre UAB alumnae Carolyn Messina as Weezy and Rachel Burttram as the lead character June; both actors have received critical acclaim for their performances. An interview with Burttram about her career was featured in the Fort Myers Florida Weekly.
Birmingham audiences will be familiar with Cefaly’s plays. “Love is a Blue Tick Hound: And Other Remedies for the Common Ache” had its world premiere at Terrific New Theatre, and “Maytag Virgin” had its Alabama premiere at Birmingham Festival Theatre. Cefaly has said of her plays, “I believe that stories of healing are important. I gravitate toward characters who are lost, ‘stuck’ and emotionally fatigued (a term I like to call ‘reckless apathy’). I want to tell every love story worth telling, and my plays run the spectrum: collision, romance, betrayal, death, heartache and redemption.”
Cefaly says her intent is to expand the boundaries of dramatic structure and character.
“In my work, I start with the audience in mind,” she said. “The pieces that I create are structured specifically to effect a sort of communal release. The intent is a spiritual quality, something that offers to transcend the moment at hand and move the characters and the audience collectively into a moment of uplift, of light and revelation. I achieve this with a strict ear for naturalistic dialogue, a ruthless distillation process and an almost promiscuous disregard for the rules.”