The Starr Reading Series is a way for us to expand our community while we celebrate and explore the plays of the city's most exciting playwrights. We feature the work of a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers who are approaching writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. We are proud to continue to offer this ongoing series to our audiences FREE of charge!
Readings are always at 8pm, and are always FREE!
FEBRUARY 25: Best Life by Melisa Tien
If you could go back and change something that went wrong in your life, wouldn't you? If you could go back and change something that went wrong in your life within the last five minutes, would you? If you could go back and change something that went wrong in your life within the last five minutes, and were at liberty to keep doing it over and over, could you? A play about someone trying to live her best life, in a world that doesn't seem to be letting her.
FEBRUARY 26: Charlatans by Kate Dakota Kremer
A madcap, gender-wiggly play about performance and justice in 18th century London. Inspired by contemporary trial transcripts and memoirs, it follows the histories of two real-life “charlatans”: Charlotte Charke, an actor, playwright, and cross-dresser; and Charles Macklin, an Irish-born actor famed for his murderous temper and sympathetic depiction of Shylock. The intertwining histories of these two outsiders offer a window into a perilously unfamiliar world that in its illogic, injustice, and joyous indeterminacy may illuminate our own.
MARCH 4 (special 6pm start time): Orchid Receipt Service by Corinne Donly
A true story told by the subconscious. Chronicling two years' worth of dreams-really-dreamt, the play follows the relationship of Monte and Davey--two transmasculine people in their late twenties--as they drift into and beyond a breakup. In documenting the playwright's dream-attempts to make a parting real, Orchid Receipt Service offers a record of the stages and symbols that a psyche moves through as it learns to let go of another.
MARCH 5: Definition by Whitney White
What happens when a black woman's mind begins to unravel? What happens when we zoom in on her? What happens when she becomes trapped in our gaze? What happens when she falls in love with a Magritte painting? Definition is a snapshot of a contemporary African American woman’s life told in an unconventional way. It is a look at delusion, and how we learn to walk with our demons every day.
The 2017-18 series is curated by William Burke, Jillian Walker, and John Del Gaudio