BLOSSOMING: 2024: A workshop production
UNTITLED DIARY PLAY by Bryanna Lee; directed by Caitlin Hart. Featuring Bryanna Lee and Jude Libner.
Synopsis: Untitled Diary Play combines storytelling, song, and video to convey Lee's journey of self-discovery and cultural reconnection. The show will delve into her coming-of-age experience while grappling with romantic feelings and the disconnection from her Filipino roots within the framework of her Catholic upbringing.
Synopsis: Untitled Diary Play combines storytelling, song, and video to convey Lee's journey of self-discovery and cultural reconnection. The show will delve into her coming-of-age experience while grappling with romantic feelings and the disconnection from her Filipino roots within the framework of her Catholic upbringing.
BLOSSOMING: 2022: Exile/Embrace
HIJACKED HONEYMOON by Holli C. Sinn; directed by Caitlin Hart. Featuring Erica Soto, Charles Holley, Susan Zarzecki and Alexa Finkler.
Synopsis: Kev doesn't want to get married; Liz desperately needs to get married; they are madly in love. They finally decide to tie the knot. Three days later Kev's sister dies. On their honeymoon, they are hijacked by the ghost of Barb. She persistently unravels the couple and their expectations of marriage, romance and how to live one's life. The play asks, does true love conquer death or does it cause it? This activity is supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, administered by LOWELL AREA ARTS COUNCILS INC, Puffin Foundation West, LTD and Meijer. |
DOUBLE BELONGING by C Heaps; directed by Mars Wilson. Featuring Jackson Armstrong, Josh Hagemann, Greg Miller, Milan Levy and Ynika Yuag.
Synopsis: In this coming-of-age story, Penn Grey discovers that it is okay for there to not be black and white answers to all of our struggles. As they stand vigil by their comatose father’s bed, we see their history through a series of flashbacks that lead up to a final confrontation with their unyielding grandfather. 
A 360 by Jeffry Chastang; directed by Asia Mark; Featuring Lou Beatty, Aaron Johnson, Ashley Thomas.
Synopsis: In a gentrifying Detroit neighborhood, family bonds are strained, relationships between neighbors are put to the test and past connections are discovered after one of the residents is shot by the police. |
BLOSSOMING 2021: a virtual edition
History Repeats Itself
Sunset Dreams by Anita Gonzalez; directed by Pat Jones
Synopsis: It all started when Lynette listened to her sister Maryse and agreed to travel to the Caribbean for Thanksgiving. It sounded ok. Distant relatives heading to the beach to get away from work and family strife. At first all is good. But once everyone settles in at the hotel, spats and bickering collide with piña coladas and shared vulnerabilities. To top it off, Aunt Nettie’s mental state keeps everyone on edge. Maryse and Lynette regurgitate old wounds and honor their shared childhood experiences. Eventually, the celebrants reach Sunset Dreams beach and immerse themselves in salty ocean waves. Except they don’t know how to swim. Ancestors and ancient rituals long-forgotten sooth their wounds. 
The Donkey Skin Sisters by Holli C. Sinn; directed by Caitlin Hart; music by Jenn Haartman Luck
Synopsis: After a ten-year estrangement, Billie and Cameron are far from their childhood fantasies of becoming a country music sister duo, The Donkey Skin Sisters. We meet them at a prison where Billie is on death row for gunning down a family while high on a cocktail of drugs. Cameron, now a professor in musical history, comes to visitations trying to understand how they ended up in two very different places. This musical reinvents country classics to chronicle the two sisters’ journey through coping and drowning with sexual trauma in their childhood. While Billie is forced to reckon with her crimes, both sisters are left with harrowing questions: Where does the buck stop? Who is truly guilty? How does someone seek redemption when bearing generations of unaccountability? They come to remember what they knew as children: their only salvation can be found in the music. |
Alis Awake by Shawntai Brown; directed by Janai Lashon; lyrics by Alesyn McCall
Synopsis: Rapper Alis is over virtual school, isolation and fitting into the expectations of Woman of Promise Academy. When classmate and fellow wordsmith Mable offers a chance to cut class early by getting a free essay, Alis welcomes the shortcut, but the link to the free essay turns out to be anything but a path to freedom. Alis tumbles into an alternate world where the Queen of Hearts threatens to behead students already lost in a broken school system, Mable included. Education cases of the past prove to be ever present in keeping students like Alis small, but figures like Linda Brown of the Brown v. Board case won’t let Alis take on the Queen alone. Books and history come to life as Alis traverses an awakening adventure of self discovery and verbal warfare. 
The American Life of Dieguito Rivera y Kahlo by Emilio Rodriguez; directed Monica Lopez Orozco
Synopsis: How far have we come and how can progress be measured? The American Life of Dieguito Rivera y Kahlo will explore the blurry lines between melting pot and multiculturalism and the messy but magical purgatory for those who fit in neither world. When the miscarried son of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo wakes up in a land far away, he sets out on a journey to find his lost identity that is somewhere between Mexican and American't. 
This activity is supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, administered by LOWELL AREA ARTS COUNCILS INC, Puffin Foundation West, LTD and Meijer.
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