The Pandemic Plays
A 10-Minute Shorts Festival
Summer 2020 edition
Lower Depth Theatre brought together eleven playwrights from across the country to create eleven brand new ten-minute short plays within two weeks. The plays were performed during a four-day festival in June and featured conversions with each playwright. These new plays captured how the current pandemic impacted and reshaped the lives of people across racial, ethnic, socio-economic, and gender boundaries.
Featured Plays:
SECOND LINE by Dionna Michelle Daniel
TRANSIENT SPACES by Joy Gregory
THE WHEELS ON THE BUS COME OFF by Jason Grasl
DELIVERY by Paula Cizmar
FOR THE LOVE OF YOU by Peppur Chambers
DURING THESE EXTRA ORDINARY TIMES by J. Nicole Brooks
WHAS A RAT TO DO by Nambi E. Kelley
ELSE by Kermit Frazier
A LAOTIAN PANDEMIC PLAY by Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay
CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC by Kevin Douglas
UNDERGROUND by Paula Cizmar
HISTORY OF THE FESTIVAL
The world has changed immeasurably in 2020. The stunning loss of life globally and the desperate attempts to stop the spread of the coronavirus have led us to ponder what comes next? Our new normal consists of social distancing, sheltering in place, and wearing masks in public. The current health crisis has plunged us into instability, anxiety, and fear.
The Pandemic has also meant that cultural institutions have closed all over the world. What can we do in the face of such devastation?
The answer remains elusive, however, one possible response is to adapt. We may not be able to greet each other in the confines of a theatre space but we can still use the power of theatre to share our stories. We can learn to adapt and go on. We can continue to make theatre.
Gallery
Meet the summer playwrights
J. Nicole Brooks
J. Nicole Brooks (she/they) is an award winning actor, author, director, educator, and social justice warrior based in Chicago. Brooks is a ensemble member with the Tony award winning Lookingglass Theatre, and serves as associate artistic director with Collaboraction Theatre. Plays written by Brooks include Her Honor Jane Byrne, HeLa, Fedra Queen of Haiti, and Black Diamond the Years The Locusts Have Eaten. Current film/tv acting credits include Say My Name (Candyman) as well as recurring roles on The Chi, Southside and season 4 of the upcoming Fargo starring opposite Chris Rock. Inquiries may be directed to MKS & Associates Los Angeles.
Kevin Douglas
Kevin Douglas received a B.F.A in acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University. After graduating Kevin took writing and improvisation classes at The Second City. Kevin is a member of, the Regional Tony Award winning company, Lookingglass Theatre where his play Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure had its World Premiere. Thaddeus and Slocum garnered Kevin a BTA Award for best writing of a play. Most recently Kevin’s play Plantation! Directed by David Schwimmer had its World Premiere at Lookingglass.
Jason Grasl
Jason Grasl is an actor, playwright, and director. He is an ensemble member at Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles. He has written three full-length plays, The Blame of Love, Emergency Management, and Lying With Badgers, the most recent of which just had its world premiere cut short due to Covid-19. He’s currently an extrovert trying to stay sane while quarantining with his introverted wife, rambunctious 2 year old son, and jittery Labrador.
Kermit Frazier
Kermit Frazier’s more than twenty plays have been produced around the country at such theaters as the New Federal Theater, Detroit Repertory Theater, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and Baltimore Center Stage. Some have also been published by Broadway Play Publishing and Dramatic Publishing. His play, “Modern Minstrelsy,” was wonderfully workshopped at the Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble. He’s also written for several television series, and his fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in such publications as The Missouri Review, Callaloo, The Chicago Review, The New York Times Book Review, and American Theatre.
Nambi E. Kelley
Nambi E. Kelley (Playwright). A writer on season 3 of Showtime's The Chi, Nambi E. Kelley was in residence at the National Black Theatre (NYC), winner of The Prince Prize 2019, Writers Grant Alliance Dramatist Guild, and The Primus Prize (finalist 2015,2019). Nambi is adapting Toni Morrison’s Jazz, and developing a play based on the life of Dr. Maya Angelou. Native Son, (Samuel French), has enjoyed productions across the country, most notably, at Yale Rep and premiered in NYC through The Acting Co (Audelco Award Best Production, Dramaleague Best Revival, results pending). An award-winning actress, Kelley's performed regionally, internationally, and on television. www.nambikelley.com
Paula Cizmar
Paula Cizmar is an award-winning playwright/librettist and is one of the authors of the documentary play SEVEN about women human rights workers which has been translated into 22 languages, produced in 30+ countries, and toured the US produced by LA Theatre Works in 2019 and 2020 before the pandemic. Her writing, even her work in opera, gives voice to those who go unheard and uses art to take on social justice issues. She teaches playwriting at USC. More information: paulacizmar.com
Peppur Chambers
Peppur is an international writer/producer/educator. Since 2004, she has developed her women’s lifestyle brand, Brown Betties ™ which includes an award- winning web series, empowerment workshops, a dinner-theater show and published novella, Harlem’s Awakening, of which she’s currently writing the second installment. Original plays “House Rules”, “The Build UP”, “Dick & Jayne Get A Life” and her one-woman show, “Harlem’s Awakening: Storytelling Live” have been produced in Los Angeles and Prague. Selected for the Squire Foundation Artist in Residence Program, she’s currently writing an ancestry project based on her published short story “Ancestry.com.”
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American writer. Her work focuses on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production. Her plays have been presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Theater Mu, and Theater Unbound. She’s a Playwrights’ Center and Theater Mu fellow in playwriting, a Loft Literary Center fellow in poetry (2018) and children's literature (2019), a Twin Cities Media Alliance fellow in public art, and an Aspen Ideas Bush Foundation fellow. She's received grants from the Jerome Foundation, Bush Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Forecast Public Art, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, MN State Arts Board, and elsewhere. Her work has been mentioned by the NY Times, Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, Mn Original, Minnesota Public Radio and more. She holds a Master in Liberal Studies degree and co-hosted a podcast on Minnesota Public Radio.
Dionna Michelle Daniel
Los Angeles based Dionna Michelle Daniel is an emerging theatre artist and arts activist from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Daniel believes that her work has a strong responsibility to investigate trauma and how it is passed down generationally, the black psyche, mysticism and ancient spirituality. Weaving song and poeticism throughout her plays, Daniel beautifully captures the soul of what it means to be Black in America. Her most notable work GUNSHOT MEDLEY: Part 1 was Ovation Award recommended and published in Routledges Contemporary Plays by Women of Color. Other notable works include her one-woman show Rain, River, Ocean and forthcoming documentary and theatrical performance art piece Paint Me White. Daniel’s is currently a member of two exclusive and prestigious LA writer’s groups: Center Theatre Group’s Writer’s Workshop and the Skylight Theatre’s PlayLab.
Joy Gregory
Joy Gregory is a founding member of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company, recipient of the 2011 Tony Award for Excellence in Regional Theater, now in its 31st season. She is equally comfortable in conventionally staged drama, collectively designed movement-based ensemble work, musical theater and literary adaptation. Her previous plays include The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World at Playwrights Horizons where it was nominated for a Drama Critics’ Circle Award and a Lucile Lortel Award for Book and Lyrics of a Musical; and an adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Race: How Blacks and Whites Think & Feel About the American Obsession with the Lookingglass Theatre Company. Joy was an Executive Producer and writer for all six seasons of the CBS drama series, Madam Secretary. She has also written for Joan of Arcadia, Switched At Birth, Felicity, Jericho and Swingtown. She is currently developing a musical series with The Chainsmokers for Freeform called Demo and a screen adaptation of The Shaggs with director Ken Kwapis. Joy holds a B.S. in Speech from Northwestern University where she studied acting with David Downs and a MFA in Critical Studies from California Institute of the Arts. Aside from writing and acting, Joy has been a waiter, a receptionist, a used semi-truck sales associate, guitarist and singer for Chicago 90s indie-rock band Tart and a first and second-grade teacher at University of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools where, for four happy years, she taught America’s future how to read.
