Still-Life With Dog read

An enthusiastic, if a bit small, audience heard Bonnie Rozanski's Still-Life With Dog read on April 19th. A miscalculation (and ignoring of the calendar!) had us doing the reading on both the first night of Passover and after the spring football game, in which the OSU team plays itself to about 90,000 fans. Our reading was late enough so that it wasn't affected, but it did take an hour to drive the playwright, Bonnie Rozanski, and her husband, Rider University President Mordechai Rozanski, three blocks from the freeway to the hotel on campus.



Next up: Sandra Dempsey's Rosa's Lament on the 24th, again in the New Works Lab at Ohio State's Drake Performance and Event Center.

Here's Bonnie Rozanski, on the left, with her cast: Jessi Biggert (Sarah), Dwayne Blackaller (Donald), Doreen Salkiewicz (in front, Fanny), Sarah Worthington (Rachel), Alex Coccia (behind Sarah, Mark), and Virginia Logan (Georgette). Since Raymond Caldwell was unable to be there, Alan Woods wound up reading Marvin, and was unable to take photos of the reading itself.

We learned from Bonnie afterwards that the idea for the play came from her own life experiences growing up. She spoke very positively of the insights the reading gave her, particularly into the character of Donald. She also praised Doreen escpecially, saying Doreen's reading of a long monologue for Fanny that ends Act I was as good as it possibly could be.

Still-Life With Dog up next

Bonnie Rozanski's Still-Life With Dog, the first runner-up in the full length play category in the 2007 Eileen Heckart Drama for Seniors Competition, will be given a staged reading on Saturday, April 19th, at the New Works Lab in the Drake Performance and Event Center, 1849 Cannon Drive, on the OSU campus. The cast includes both Ohio State graduate and undergraduate actors and performers from the Central Ohio theatre community:

Georgette: Virginia Logan
Fanny: Doreen Salkiewicz
Donald: Dwayne Blackaller
Rachel: Sarah Worthington
Mark: Alex Coccia
Marvin: Raymond Caldwell
Sarah: Jessi Biggert

The reading will start at 7:30 p.m. Parking is free in the lot across Cannon Drive, between Lincoln and Morrill Towers. Bonnie Rozanski is flying in from New Jersey for the reading, and will welcome feedback--

Theodicy at Urban Arts Space, March 11

the readers: left to right, Alan Woods, Lloyd Graham, Anita Davis, Patty Wallace-Winbush, Truman Winbush. All photos by Lesley Ferris.



Alan Woods introduces the reading

Judy Juanita's Theodicy was given a reading on March 11th in the new Urban Arts Space in downtown Columbus, which currently houses an exhibit called "Midnight Robbers: The Artists of the Notting Hill Carnival," curated by OSU Theatre Professor Lesley Ferris and Adela Ruth Tomasett of Middlesex University (more information at http://theatre.osu.edu/carnival/index.html). The reading was performed by Anita Davis, Patricia Wallace-Winbush, Truman Winbush, and Lloyd Graham; Alan Woods stepped in to read when a fifth actor had a traffic accident and couldn't get to the event.


the cast, joined by Ann Alaia Woods (at the extreme left), who videotaped the reading.

March 11th was chosen for the reading both because of availability of the space, and because it marked the anniversary of the 1959 opening of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in New York, the first play by an African-American woman playwright to be produced on Broadway.