Cal Rep's Next Play PROUD TO PRESENT...Confronts Race In The Rehearsal Room

6 students, 3 black and 3 white, construct a presentation about the genocide of a little-known African people. The rehearsal room becomes a cultural crossroad with our own colonial past careening headlong into Black Lives Matter, Neo-Nazis, and the #MeToo movement. As colonial 20th century Africa bleeds into 21st century America, we start to wonder, can these students escape their own story?

Proud to Present... is an OBIE award-winning play that "impressively navigates the tricky boundaries that separate art and life" says The New York Times. Featuring at its heart a familiar conflict; how are stories told when history is always written by the victor? The story from the white oppressor gets told while the Herero, who were nearly wiped out of existence, seemingly have no story to tell.

Cal Rep's Artistic Director Jeff Janisheski says "Proud to Present is a challenging, meta-theatrical play reflecting issues present in the rehearsal room and in our society: prejudice and power, racism and remembering, stereotypes and storytelling. I'm thrilled that we're presenting this important new play by one of America's most important new playwrights, Jackie Sibblies Drury."

Jackie Sibblies Drury is an emerging American Playwright currently residing in Brooklyn. Proud to Present... premiered at the Soho Rep in 2012. Drury was inspired to write Proud to Present... when an attempt to write a historical drama about the Herero Genocide ended in failure. That failure and the struggle to articulate it led her to create a similar situation on stage. In speaking about the play Drury says, "The way that we talk about race now and the way that we deal with racism is by not talking about it and not dealing with it or feeling that we already sort of dealt with it, and I think that can be really damaging."

Director Chris Anthony is the Managing Director of the CSULB Theatre Arts Department. She is also the Associate Artistic Director at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles working with their Will Power to Youth program.

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