A new play to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act commissioned by the University of Alabama at Birmingham College of Arts and Sciences Department of Theatre will get a staged reading Saturday, Sept. 19.
Playwright Robert Earl Price wrote the work, “A Butterfly Effect.” The reading is set for 7 p.m. in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, Odess Theatre, 1200 10th Ave. South. Theatre UAB’s Cheryl Hall and Karla Koskinen will direct. A special talkback with the playwright will take place after the reading. Admission is free. Call 205-934-3236 or visit the department online at www.uab.edu/cas/theatre.
About “A Butterfly Effect”: Imagine Sun Ra’s vamp on Birmingham and the signing of the Voting Rights Act, circa 1965. Price intricately weaves lyrical dialogue, jazz and movement to explore chaos theory, wherein a small change can bring about big differences. Sun Ra’s elaborate musings allow the audience to time travel through physical and sensual dimensions on a chariot ride powered by pride, plunging valves moving at light speed.
Theatre UAB commissioned the play from Price after reworking its Ruby Lloyd Apsey Play Search. Apsey, who loved new plays and up-and-coming playwrights, wanted to leave a legacy of helping get new works out into the light where people can see them and hear what they have to say, and so offered Theatre UAB a bequest to do so. Theatre UAB for decades held an open competition every other year, offered a $1,000 cash prize and received hundreds of submissions, says Lee Shackleford, coordinator of the Apsey Play Search.
| Playwright Robert Earl Price wrote the work, “A Butterfly Effect.” The reading is set for 7 p.m. in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, Odess Theatre. A special talkback with the playwright will take place after the reading. Admission is free. Call 205-934-3236 or visit the department online. |
“It was a staggering task, trying to not only read all of those scripts but to somehow choose a ‘winner’ out of such a huge pile,” Shackleford said.
So CAS Dean Robert E. Palazzo suggested changing the model of the Apsey program. By commissioning a known playwright to create a new work for Theatre UAB, the department would still meet the search’s original intents and aspirations.
“The challenge, of course, is to find the right playwright, especially if we’re going to task him or her with writing about a particular theme, event or person,” Shackleford said. “Department of Theatre Chair Kelly Allison had worked with Price before and felt his work to be excellent, just the sort of creativity and talent we needed for our first commission. So I contacted him and told him we were especially interested in a new script that would somehow celebrate or commemorate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And with very little more guidance than that, he began writing and we began planning for the staged reading of whatever he wrote.”
African-American poet and playwright Price is creative writer in residence at Washington College in Maryland and coordinator for the annual Kent County Poetry Festival. He is a graduate of the American Film Institute and a protégée of Oscar-winning film director Jan Kadar and Pulitzer/Emmy winner Alex Haley. His many awards include The Theater Communications Group/NEA Playwright's Residency, The American Film Institute's William Wyler Award for Screenwriting, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and a Cultural Olympics commission for theater.
As playwright in residence at 7 Stages Theater in Atlanta, Price’s recent plays, “Hush: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins” and “View Finder” have premiered to wide ranging acclaim. On the international stage, his play “Blue Monk” was recently produced in Johannesburg, becoming one of five plays nominated for the National Theater Award in South Africa. The Berlin production at Theater Am Winterfeldtplatz of “Yardbird's Vamp,” an amusing and macabre look at the life and art of Charlie Parker, closed to standing room only audiences. Nine professionally produced plays include: an adaptation of Claude Brown's “Man Child in the Promised Land” and a ritual play, “Black Cat Bones For Seven Sons.”