Church and State at Skylight Theatre Company

Skylight Theatre takes an election year look at politics with CHURCH & STATE. Where do you stand? How did we get here and where we are going. The National New Playwright Network Rolling World Premiere of CHURCH & STATE by EMMY nominated writer Jason Odell Williams comes to the Skylight Theatre and will run in rep with the American Premiere of OBAMA-OLOGY by Aurin Squire. Both plays are produced in association with Providence Entertainment, LTD.

Three days before his bid for re-election in North Carolina, a Republican U.S. Senator makes an off-the-cuff comment to a blogger that calls into question his belief in God. The Senator’s devoutly Christian wife and liberal Jewish campaign manager try desperately to contain the damage. In a brutally honest and surprisingly funny way, the play sheds light on how religion, guns, and social media influence our elections.

“Shortly after the massacre at Virginia Tech, the idea for the play was planted. Watching candlelight vigils with support from rival schools touched me profoundly. Then Tucson happened, then Aurora. And I watched again, riveted and angry. Then Newtown, and I’d had enough. Getting to the heart of the people inside these issues is what interested me. When you write about people (not issues) you can’t help but find humor and sadness, honesty and heartbreak, along with an uplifting spirit all at the same time. Because isn’t that what being human is all about?” – Jason Odell Williams; Playwright

Jason Odell Williams (Playwright – Church & State) is an EMMY Award-nominated writer and producer ("Brain Games") as well as an award-winning playwright, novelist and screenwriter. His play Handle With Care (published by Dramatists Play Service) ran for over 100 performances Off-Broadway and has been produced 18 times in the last five years in the U.S. and Canada. The play was a NY Times Critics’ Pick where they raved, “Mr. Williams has achieved something special: He has written a hilarious and heartwarming romantic comedy...which exudes gobs of comic energy and insight.” His other plays have been produced or developed at NC Stage, the cell, the DR2, Primary Stages, The Blank Theatre, The Lark, and EST. As part of the NNPN Rolling World Premiere, Church & State will be staged at JCC Center Stage in Rochester, NY and in 2017 at the New Jersey Repertory Theatre, Long Brach, NJ. Jason's first novel, Personal Statement, was optioned for a three-picture deal October 2015, and he is currently adapting it for the screen with his wife and collaborator Charlotte Cohn. Their TV script, Birdland, was a Top 10 Finalist in The Tracking Board's 2015 Pilot Competition.
Elina de Santos (Director – Church & State) is a multi-award winning guest director at theaters throughout Los Angeles. She is the Co-Artistic Director of Rogue Machine Theatre where she has directed the World Premieres of Dirty Filthy Love Story, Yard Sale Signs, Razorback, and Nice Things, as well as the first Los Angeles productions of Falling, Stop Kiss and Bhutan. For West Coast Jewish Theatre: New Jerusalem and Broken Glass. For PRT: a workshop of Galileo,Death of a Salesman, Orpheus Descending (LADCC Award for Direction). At the Odyssey: Awake and Sing!, The Blue Room and Misalliance. She has directed at the Pasadena Playhouse and regionally for such companies as the Berkshire Theatre Festival and the Pittsburgh Public Theater. Elina received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Career Achievement in Directing.

Church & State opens at 8:30pm on July 2nd and runs through August 14th, playing Saturdays 8:30pm and Sundays 3pm. No performance 7/23 & time changed to 7:00pm for 7/24 only. Obama-ology opens at 8:30pm on July 23rd and runs through August 28, 2016, playing Fridays 8:30 and Sundays7:00. Skylight Theatre is located at 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave., LA. CA. 90027. Tickets are $15 - $39 (or two-play package $63). Reservations: 213-761-7061 or online at http://skylighttix.com

Skylight Theatre Company discovers, develops and produces new, exhilarating works that expand mainstream theatre while nurturing and educating the people who create them. A recipient of the prestigious Steinberg National Theatre Critics Citation (Dontrell, Who Kissed The Sea – Nathan Alan Davis), Skylight’s resident PlayLab writers have been recognized with productions nationwide, a national 2014 USA Ford Fellowship in Theater and Performance (Sigrid Gilmer), and locally as a winner in the 2015 Humanitas/CTG Playwriting Prize (Louisa Hill). Skylight won 4 Ovation Awards in 2014 for The Wrong Man and Pray To Ball (the most of any intimate theatre in LA). LA Weekly included the Skylight’s productions of Years To The Day, Open House and Sexsting on their Top Ten list of plays for 2013. Skylight's first year as a company dedicated to developing new plays was 2011; their production of Hermetically Sealed made theLA Times annual list of Top Ten Plays, and Mad Women moved from Los Angeles to La MaMa in New York. Since then, plays developed by Skylight have been performed in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Oregon, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and internationally in Scotland and France. In 2014, Dramatist Magazine cited Skylight as a “powerhouse of new play development.” For more information, script submission policy and production history go to http://skylighttheatrecompany.com