Season Three

Celebrating the past, present, and future of African-American women playwrights

New Brooklyn Theatre has dedicated its 2015 season to the past, present, and future of African-American women playwrights. In 2014, the company staged a series of readings of historic, but neglected, African-American plays from the 1850s to the 1930s with the promise that audiences would help the company select one for a full production. In 2015, the company will fulfill that promise by producing audience favorite, Rachel by Angelina Weld Grimké.

The second production of the season will be the NYC premiere of Las Meninas by Lynn Nottage, a Brooklyn-based recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Pulitzer Prize. Despite being written nearly a century apart, Rachel and Las Meninas both explore repressed histories and the fear of bringing children into unjust societies. Both plays will run in repertory from August 5 to 29 at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Both productions are supported by a generous subsidy from the Irondale Center.

Beginning in late September, the company will mount The Second Century, a festival of new plays by ten emerging or early-career African-American female playwrights. If Angelina Weld Grimké is a marker for an African-American female playwright's past, and Lynn Nottage is an example of a phenomenal African-American female playwright in the present, then it is important to help promote works of young African-American female playwrights, those who will play a great role in shaping the American theatre's future. With The Second Century, named to mark Rachel's centennial, New Brooklyn Theatre aims to do just that.

All performances will be followed by post-show discussions between the audience, the cast, and invited leaders from governmental, activist, artistic, and academic circles.

In keeping with the company’s history and mission, all shows will be free to the public.

Our production of Lynn Nottage's Las Meninas will be the New York City premiere of a story of the love affair between Louis XIV’s wife Queen Marie-Thérèse and Nabo, her African servant as told through the imagination of their illegitimate daughter.

Las Meninas is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). Additional support for Las Meninas is made possible with public funds from the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered in Kings County by Brooklyn Arts Council.

The production is presented in repertory with Angelina Weld Grimké's RACHEL. Both plays explore repressed histories and the fear of bringing children into unjust societies.

CAST: Kelly Campbell (La Valliere), Toni Ann Denoble (Louis Marie-Therese), Anna Nanette Hudson (Queen Mother), Kestrel Farin Leah (Mother Superior), Samantha Levitt (Queen Marie-Therese), Rance Nix (Nabo Sensugali), Christian Ryan (Doctor), Arnaud Spanos (King Louis XIV), Zach Wegner (Painter)

*These Actors appeared courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association.

ENSEMBLE: Alex Sarrigeorgiou, Allison Anderegg, Ana Gencarelli, Caiti Lattimer, Cassie Gilling, Clea Decrane, Hannah McKechnie, Julia Schonberg, Katrina Klein, Maryn Pearl Shaw, Molly Jones, Robin Friend Stift, Shannon Mary Gilroy, Violeta Picayo

The ensemble in New Brooklyn Theatre's production of Las Meninas consists of a group of talented actors who possess a variety of different skills and talents; have performed regionally all over the United States, on Broadway and internationally; and have trained in prestigious conservatories such as The University of the Arts, Boston University, The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, Rutgers University, Interlochen Arts Academy, The National Theater Institute, Chapman University, The Moscow Theatre School, Vassar College, The London Academy for Music and Dramatic Art, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Grimké’s powerful play takes us inside the home of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of the lynching of a father and son. In a year when the streets ring with chants of “Black Lives Matter,” RACHEL asks us to feel the quiet pain of a young black woman who doubts whether she can bear to bring more lives into a violent world. Courtney Harge directs.

The production is presented in repertory with Lynn Nottage's LAS MENINAS. Both plays explore repressed histories and the fear of bringing children into unjust societies.

CAST: Santoya Fields (Rachel Loving), Bonita Jackson (Mrs. Loving), Lauren Lattimore (Mrs. Lane), Temesgen Tocruray (John Strong), Damone Williams (Tom Loving), Angelina Weld Grimké (Playwright), Courtney Harge (Director), Wi-Moto Nyoka (Assistant Director)