Please note that this reading has been postponed to another yet to be determined date.
On the first night of Rosh Hashanah, Beatrice Larson, a 70-year-old New Yorker and Rita Shah, a 23-year-old actress, spend their first evening together in Beatrice's Upper East Side apartment musing race, religion, relationships, loss, and solitude. Rita dreams of performing on stage, a challenge for a South Asian woman in 1995 facing casting discrimination while Beatrice mourns the loss of the family she once had. Through heartache, joy, and Cole Porter, Beatrice and Rita develop an unlikely friendship over the next ten years with the two women reuniting on Rosh Hashanah.
Directed by John Pietrowski
Thanks to a generous grant from the Smart Foundation, the Madison Arts and Culture Alliance, in partnership with MCAC, is presenting concert readings of seven new works by women playwrights from New Jersey.
Yasmine Beverly Rana’s latest play, After Rome was produced at the Khan Theatre in Jerusalem (2022). This year, she was the cover story of 201 Magazine’s The Arts Issue. Plays have been developed and presented at theaters including Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Writers Theatre of New Jersey, La MaMa Experimental Theatre, Tara Arts of London, among others. Fellowships and grants include a NJ State Council on the Arts TRANSITional Art Project, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Award in Playwriting, and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship. The War Zone is My Bed was a Francesca Primus Prize finalist. Publications include The Pirandello Society of America Journal, The Alabama Literary Review, Blackbird, The Contemporary European Idea, The Kenyon Review, Lilith, TDR: The Drama Review, and numerous anthologies. The University of Chicago Press and Seagull Books "In Performance Series" anthologized four of Yasmine’s plays in The War Zone is My Bed and Other Plays.