Performances & Readings

A Nervous Smile (staged reading) This dark comedy of moral complexity features three parents exhausted from the unrelenting demands of caregiving for their teens with cerebral palsy. The social satire offers an up-close-and-personal look at the emotional and monetary challenges that can come with raising children with disabilities.

Colossal (staged reading) A star college football player struggles to move forward and not simply live in the vibrant past after a spine injury ends his career. Is the human body an instrument for language or a tool for violence? Structured like a football game, Colossal simultaneously celebrates and attacks our nation's most popular form of theater.

Cyrano (staged reading) A brilliant deaf poet is hopelessly in love with Roxy, a beautiful hearing woman who loves poetry. But she doesn't understand sign language—and she loves Cyrano's hearing brother, Chris. Can Cyrano express his love to Roxy with his hands or must he teach Chris to “speak" his words for him? ASL becomes the language of love in this new spin on a classic love story, performed to be understood by all audiences—hearing and deaf.

Next to Normal (mainstage production) Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Next to Normal reveals one family’s struggle with mental illness through the story of Diana, a mother battling bipolar disorder. Her kaleidoscope of feelings—anger, yearning, sorrow, guilt and the memory of what must have been love—coexist in every note in this powerhouse of muscular grace and operatic force.

Theory of Mind (tour production) This sensitive yet unsentimental portrait of a young adult on the autism spectrum centers on a college-bound, 17-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome. His outing with a young woman becomes a memorable, insightful look at the tugs, shifts, and about-faces found on the autism spectrum. Written by the playwright of Mixed Blood's critically acclaimed On the Spectrum and Vestibular Sense.