Roger Q. Mason's CALIFAS TRILOGY is Coming to Los Angeles
The first play in the trilogy, California Story, will premiere at Outside In Theatre, April 26-June 3.
Roger Q. Mason will have their Califas Trilogy produced by Outside In Theatre and Skylight Theatre Company in association with Roots & Wings Project in Los Angeles this spring and summer. The first play in the trilogy, California Story, will premiere at Outside In Theatre, April 26-June 3. Part two, Hide and Hide, will be presented May 9-June 22 at Skylight Theatre Company. The final play in the trilogy, Juana Maria, will receive a staged reading presented with The Roots and Wings Project at Outside In Theatre on May 25 & June 1.
Roger Q. Mason's Califas Trilogy is a trio of genre-obliterating plays about the beauty and the underbelly of ambition in America's West. These three new plays examine the past, present and future of California as expressed through western expansion and gentrification.
"My goal for Califas Trilogy is to bring Los Angeles together as a community," said playwright Roger Q. Mason. "Our city has often been divided by social disparities, real estate interests and culture wars aimed at dividing rather than uniting us. The LA of my youth was essentially a collection of suburbs in search of a true center. But that is not its present and cannot be its future. The recent fires have highlighted our need to come together and transcend our differences in finance, geography, privilege, and access. Califas Trilogy is an invitation for Los Angeles to embark on a new journey of unity through the exploration offered in these works of performance."
California Story
Directed by Michael Alvarez
April 26 - June 3 at Outside In Theatre
Whipping between a post-capitalist water-world dystopian future and the Golden Era of 19th Century Manifest Destiny, California Story scrutinizes the past, present, and (hopefully not) future cost of grasping for privilege in America. At the heart of the tale is Pio Pico - California's last Mexican governor - who sacrifices family, identity and integrity to stake his claim in the American dream during California's journey to statehood in the 1800s. California Story was a finalist for the 2024 Ojai Playwrights Conference.
Hide and Hide
Directed by Jessica Hanna
May 9 - June 22 at Skylight Theatre Company
Set in seedy 1980 Los Angeles, Hide and Hide is a Homeric critique of the American Dream. Enter Constanza - a recent Filipina immigrant from Marcos' Philippines - and Billy - a white Texan rent boy running from a Christian sex conversion camp. Their lives collide while searching for the freedom dreamed up on movie screens, billboards, and our minds. Hide and Hide is the recipient of the LA New Play Project from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, & Television. Additional support provided by the Vladimir And Araxia Buckhantz Foundation and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
JUANA MARIA
Directed by Michael Alvarez
Presented in association with The Roots and Wings Project
May 25 & June 1 at Outside In Theatre
West of the West Coast lies the isolated St. Nicolas Island where a young indigenous woman lived for almost two decades without human contact. And then she was "rescued" in 1853 by an American sailor with a bounty. After living as an exotic at the Santa Barbara Mission for seven weeks, rich food, fleeting fame, and the excess of the West killed her. This is a dirge for her last two months alive. Juana Maria is a recipient of the 2024 Ojai Playwright Conference Fall Playwright Residency.
Roger Q. Mason
(Playwright) (they/them) is an award-winning writer, performer and educator who satirizes and revises history to disrupt the biases that separate rather than unite us. Their playwriting has appeared on Broadway; Off/Off-Off-Broadway; and regionally. Their recent productions have garnered five Barrymore Award nominations in Philadelphia, a Jeff Award Recommendation in Chicago and the San Francisco Chronicle's prestigious Datebook Pick. Mason's World Premiere of Lavender Men was lauded by the Los Angeles Times as "evoking the mingled visions of Suzan-Lori Parks, Jeremy O. Harris and Michael R. Jackson." They received 2024's Playwrights' Center McKnight National Playwright Commission, the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Grant Award, a Hermitage Residency, a Lucille Lortel commission, a Kilroys List nod, and the Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award. Mason is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and an alum of the Ma-Yi's Writing Lab, Page 73's Interstate 73 Writers Group, the Fire This Time Festival, and Primary Stages Writing Cohort. They currently produce a memoir/cooking segment on Instagram called Cooking with Q: A Playwright's Guide to Telling My Truth. Previously, they co-hosted the podcast Sister Roger's Gayborhood and hosted This Way Out Radio's Queerly Yours: Portraits in Courage. As an educator, Mason has served as a mentor for Lambda Literary, Workshop Theatre, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute's Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. They are currently on faculty at CalArts. Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. Instagram: @rogerq.mason
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