The Seagullman

Written by Leo Kurland
Directed by Emerson Steady
Produced by Eliza Huang

Fall Mainstage
Shanley Pavilion

Two Coast Guard volunteer workers conduct a report on the abandoned oil wells in Houston’s Trinity Bay. These wells, left unattended and improperly shut down, are possible environmental hazards—but the Texas government hasn’t been inclined to force companies to clean up their own abandoned wells. The volunteers’ well intentioned mission to raise awareness about the issue becomes complicated by their discovery on a particularly strange platform: a trash-eating anthropomorphic mutant seagull. Faced with the moral question of destroying the seagullman’s home and opposed by the seagullman’s charismatic (and off-putting) lawyer, the volunteers grapple with what it means to try to save the world.

Crave: Or How To Freeze the Phantasmagoria

Written by Lola Bodé
Directed by Talia Hartman-Sigall
Produced by Maddi Anderson

Spring Mainstage
Shanley Pavillion

Maeve, Charlie, and Anna are good friends at college, but when Anna dies, Maeve and Charlie’s lives systematically change. After a falling-out, Maeve and Charlie reunite in the wake of Maeve’s new discovery: Charlie’s new memoir that is about to be published. Throughout the course of one evening, Maeve and Charlie must rehash old and new wounds, face their grief, and defeat a ghost. Lola Bodé's Crave: or How to Freeze the Phantasmagoria, explores the ways we let the past haunt us, our relationships, and our art.

Eternal Ellipsis

Written by Zakyra Ashby
Directed by Katie Horton
Produced by Orville Amankwah

Winter Reading Series
Shanley Pavillion

As their inevitable separation approaches, forever friends Halle, Katoria, and Jané spend the summer following their junior year of high school preparing to navigate their last full school session together. Each girl is at a different stage of accepting the realities post-high school responsibilities entail—or, perhaps, each is at a different stage of avoiding her fate. These lifelong friendships are tested by well- kept secrets, love in excruciatingly beautiful forms, and the exhaustion that follows carrying the weight of two other worlds on one’s back since kindergarten. With the personalities, sisterhood, and humane tribulations of this vibrant female trio, we reject the notion that stories about Blackness, in order to be captivating, must be fueled by racial tragedy and trauma.

Itinerary

Written by Nathan Gilbert
Directed by Roie Dahan
Produced by Orville Amankwah

Winter Reading Series
Shanley Pavillion

Four friends, four consecutive road trips. The plan is to kick college's ass — but what happens when the plan has to change? Itinerary by Nathan Gilbert lives in the sweaty, anxious, sublime in-between that is young adulthood, and the big dreams and false promises that make next year's road trip anything but predictable.

Crashing In

Written by Kailey Morand
Directed by Haley Bart
Produced by Orville Amankwah

Winter Reading Series
Shanley Pavillion

Crashing In is an all-female, fragmented, surrealist play that asks what happens when the past crashes into the present, and what we do when we feel we can’t escape the cards we were dealt. In their girlhood, sisters Shane and Jesse had the perfect plan for themselves: they would grow up, live together forever, and raise a child with one another. However, life had other plans, and Jesse’s rejection of motherhood comes back to haunt her when Shane’s daughter Annalise shows up on her doorstep. Caretaking, addiction, and codependency entangle and unroot one another as life unravels before our eyes, in all of its iterations, all at once.