Directed by Project Shaw's David Staller, the cast will feature Condola Rashad, Laila Robins, Max Gordon Moore, Shalita Grant, Jaspal Binning, William Demeritt, Jeff Ronan and Wilton Yeung.
"In a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, college student Alice is set for a reunion with her birth mother—who gave her up almost twenty years ago," according to Gingold Theatrical Group. "At the same time, in the same hotel, there’s an international botanical symposium, which has been painstakingly organized by Edgar. Things are not going smoothly for anyone. Alice’s mother is mysteriously late. Half the rooms in the hotel have busted pipes. And a radical eco-activist group that calls itself the Pangaea Liberation Front is mounting an Occupy Wall Street-style protest in the parking lot. Add to this situation a stoner hotel clerk, a militant security officer and Alice’s adopted mother—who shows up in Ethiopia hell-bent on bringing Alice back to the States—and soon identities and agendas are clashing wildly."
The upcoming reading is part of Gingold Theatrical Group's new play development program. The writers in this program, according to press notes, are "currently on-staff critics or journalists devoted to covering the theater scene. These plays are developed in a workshop process. These plays are to focus on the Shavian precepts involving individual human rights, political and social responsibility, and the comic absurdity of daily life."
Playwright David Cote is theatre editor and chief drama critic for Time Out New York. He teaches arts criticism at Brooklyn College. His writing has appeared in Opera News, The Guardian, The New York Times and elsewhere. He has contributed several essays to the Best Plays Yearbook series. He is a contributing critic for NY1’s "On Stage" and a member of the New York Drama Critics Circle. David has written three popular companion books about hit Broadway musicals: "Wicked: The Grimmerie," "Jersey Boys" and "Spring Awakening: In the Flesh." He is also an early-career playwright and librettist.
For more information, call (212) 353-7823 or visit www.gingoldgroup.com.
