CAST Jeunée Simon*
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CREATIVE TEAM Dael Orlandersmith Elizabeth Carter Ariella Cooley Regina Evans Jon Tracy Randy Wong-Westbrooke Alicia Lerner* |
*Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers
By Dael Orlandersmith
Directed by Elizabeth Carter
View the Stoop Stories Program here:
Combining heightened prose, poetry, and music playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith crafts a solo show with the rhythm and punch of big band jazz. From a stoop in Harlem, audiences meet the diversity of voices that populate the narrator’s NYC neighborhood. The variety of characters are drawn from Orlandersmith’s personal life and limitless imagination. She introduces us to an elderly Polish Holocaust survivor who has a chance meeting with Billie Holiday, a young poet struggling with addiction, a teenage Puerto Rican immersed in counter culture, a washed-up rock star, and a seventy-year-old New Yorker on a pilgrimage to the West Village to see Nina Simone. Aurora presents a new production of this compelling play with a local actor and team.
“Orlandersmith is one of a generation of gifted solo performers — among them Anna Deavere Smith, Danny Hoch, Sarah Jones and Heather Raffo — who demolished the fourth wall of American middle-class theater."
— Charlotte Stoudt, Los Angeles Times
Aurora is known for its intimacy because of our thrust stage. And because of that intimacy -- combined with the limitations of Actor's Equity Association's guidelines for COVID-19 safety -- we were forced to make the decision to present Stoop Stories as a filmed production.
“As I Walk I Remember”
Reflections on Stoop Stories
By Dawn Monique Williams
Read the article here
Stoop Stories Post-Show Conversations
Sunday, September 19 at 4pm PDT
Saturday, September 25 at 12pm PDT
Friday, October 1 at 5pm PDT
Please join us for a discussion of Aurora's production of Stoop Stories by Dael Orlandersmith. Participants are welcome to join any and or all discussions prior to or following a viewing of the play. Discussion host, Dawn Monique Williams, may be joined by the actor, director, community members, and or local storytellers.
Combining heightened prose, poetry, and music playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith crafts a solo show with the rhythm and punch of big band jazz. From a stoop in Harlem, audiences meet the diversity of voices that populate the narrator’s NYC neighborhood. The variety of characters are drawn from Orlandersmith’s personal life and limitless imagination. She introduces us to an elderly Polish Holocaust survivor who has a chance meeting with Billie Holiday, a young poet struggling with addiction, a teenage Puerto Rican immersed in counter-culture, a washed-up rock star, and a seventy-year-old New Yorker on a pilgrimage to the West Village to see Nina Simone. Aurora presents a new production of this compelling play with a local actor and team._
CAST Jeunée Simon*
|
CREATIVE TEAM Dael Orlandersmith Elizabeth Carter Ariella Cooley Regina Evans Jon Tracy Randy Wong-Westbrooke Alicia Lerner* |
*Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers
Dael Orlandersmtih (Playwright) is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Drama Desk Award nominee for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Actress in a Play for Yellowman, and Obie Award winner for Beauty’s Daughter. Other works include: Liar, Liar (1994); Beauty’s Daughter (1995); Monster (1996); The Gimmick (1999); Raw Boys (2005); Stoop Stories (2008); Bones (2010); Horsedreams (2011); Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men (2012); Forever (2014-2015). Orlandersmith is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, The Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2005 PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for a playwright in mid-career. Orlandersmith is the recipient of a Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights Fellowship, and she won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for The Gimmick in 1999.
Elizabeth Carter (Director) returns to The Aurora Theatre Company as a director, after appearing several times on its stage. She has had the great pleasure of directing Bondage (Alter Theatre) and since has directed King Lear (SF Shakespeare Festival), Feel the Spirit (Shotgun Players/Colt Couer), Every 28 Hours Plays and A Place To Belong (A.C.T), for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (African American Shakespeare Company), From the Ground Up, Participants and Just One Day (TheatreFirst). She has directed for the California Shakespeare Theater Conservatory for nearly 20 years . Elizabeth is the inaugural SDCF Llloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artist at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Jeunée Simon* (Narrator) is an actor, director, and intimacy coordinator in the Bay Area. Recent credits include: La Ronde (Cutting Ball Theater), Men On Boats u/s (American Conservatory Theater), HeLa (TheatreFIRST), and When My Mama Was A Hittite (Magic Theatre). Simon is a proud recipient of the 2017 RHE Artistic Fellowship and a 2019 Directing Apprentice with PlayGround. She was last heard in Aurora’s audio production of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye adapted by Lydia R. Diamond. jeuneesimon.com
Ariella Cooley (Sound Designer) is a sound designer, musician, performance artist and arts educator based in Alameda. She is the resident sound designer for The Rabbit Hole Children’s Theater (SF), focusing mainly on original audio plays for little ones. Her theatrical credits include productions with the MFA program at American Conservatory Theater (SF), Theatre of Yugen (SF), National Queer Theater (NYC), and Ragged Wing Ensemble (Oakland). In 2017, she received a TBA award for Outstanding Sound Design for her work on The Winter’s Tale (Ragged Wing Ensemble). In 2019, she was nominated in the same category for her work on A Noh Christmas Carol (Theater of Yugen). When she is not designing sound for the stage, Ariella is working on her debut album of original solo music.
Regina Evans (Costume Designer) is an Abolitionist in the fight against Child Sex Trafficking, a Playwright and a Costume Designer.
Jon Tracy (he/him/his) (Lighting Designer) Jon works internationally as a director, playwright, designer, educator and facilitator. He is the recipient of awards from the Kennedy Center Meritorious Achievement Award, North Bay Artys, Marquee Journalists, Ellys, Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, and Theatre Bay Area, and has also been honored with the Solano College Theatre Alumni Award. He is a grant recipient from Theatre Bay Area, Shotgun Players’ Bridging the Gap, SUI Generis, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the Company Facilitator for TheatreFirst, Co-Artistic Director of Groundswell: The International Theatre Intensive, Company Member of both Shotgun Players and PlayGround, as well as a proud member of SDC, the union for stage directors and choreographers. jontracyplays.com
Randy Wong-Westbrooke (they/them) (Scenic Designer) is an award-nominated scenic designer born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically on the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people. Driven by their own mixed-Asian, trans, and non-binary identities, they seek opportunities to work with diverse creative teams to tell radical, provocative, and intersectional stories that question and celebrate our collective histories.
They have designed sets for American Conservatory Theater’s M.F.A. Program, Shotgun Players, TheatreFIRST, Crowded Fire Theater, Ferocious Lotus, SF Playhouse’s Sandbox, New Conservatory Theater Company, Custom Made Theatre, Cutting Ball Theater, Los Altos Stage Company, Palo Alto Players, Contra Costa Civic Theater, as well as many other new and independent projects.
This Fall they will begin pursuing their M.F.A. in Set Design from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. rwwestbrooke.com
Alicia Lerner* (Stage Manager) is excited to make her Aurora Theatre Company debut. She most recently stage managed 42nd Street Moon’s productions of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Scrooge in Love!, Hot Mikado and the entire 2018-2019 season. Other stage management credits include Follies in Concert, Me and My Girl and The Secret Garden (42nd Street Moon); Hedwig and the Angry Inch (San Jose Stage Company and National Tour); La Cage Aux Folles, Noises Off, and The Christians (San Francisco Playhouse); Old Hats, Indian Ink, Let There Be Love, I’m Still Standing, The Big Meal, and Fields of Gold (American Conservatory Theater.); The Jungle Book (Marin Theatre Company); West Side Story (Mountain Play); How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Bay Area Musicals); The Secret Garden(Lucky Penny Productions); The Sound of Music, The Wiz, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Berkeley Playhouse); The Train Driver, Shirley Valentine, and Agnes Under the Big Top (Long Wharf Theatre); Annie Get Your Gun, and Radio Girl (Goodspeed Musicals); and Shakespeare Festivals (2007-2009), Dancing in the Dark, and Working (The Old Globe). She holds a BFA in Media-Film Studies from The University of California, San Diego and is a Proud member of Actors' Equity.