Nate Eppler's HUMAN RESOURCES World Premiere is Coming to Oz Arts Nashville

Contemporary arts center OZ Arts Nashville is partnering with award-winning theater collective Nashville Story Garden to present the world premiere of Human Resources, a deeply funny and unsettling new site-specific, theatrical event developed for OZ's expansive Creative Warehouse. The new performance experience, led by beloved director Lauren Shouse with text by acclaimed playwright Nate Eppler, will play at OZ Arts for two weeks, March 27-29 and April 2-5.

Human Resources unfolds in the comically surreal world of fictional corporation Liminal, a pharmaceutical conglomerate where nothing is as it seems. Audiences will follow branching narratives through a dizzying maze of corporate doublespeak and endless paperwork as the company's employees unravel a mysterious HR complaint and walk the ethical tightrope of corporate survival. The unique performance-going experience allows audiences to witness different scenes from multiple perspectives, being guided by performers to different sides of the expansive OZ Arts creative warehouse. Lively physical interactions, stunning visual stagecraft, surprising humor, and eerily familiar nine-to-five horrors combine to create an inventive and thought-provoking performance where the truth depends on whose each audience member sees. The locally-developed work uses incisive wit and clever visuals to dismantle assumptions about what to expect from the American workplace and provide a laugh-filled critique of bewildering late-stage capitalism.

Theater fans will be familiar with the work of the all-star creative team behind Human Resources. Director Lauren Shouse has received many accolades for her Nashville Rep productions of Avenue Q, Waitress, and The Cake, among others. In addition to a prolific list of writing for stage and screen, playwright Nate Eppler oversaw the influential Ingram New Works Lab and was artist-in-residence at Nashville Rep for many years and now works with The Theater Bug on their "Playground" initiative that encourages young people to write original stage plays. The production also features striking design elements by Phillip Franck (lighting), Tasha AF Lemley (sound), Diana DeGarmo (set), Madeleine Hicks (props), and Jessica & Jacob Anderson (video).

The cast of this engaging theatrical event is led by Nashville Story Garden co-founders and artistic directors Lauren Berst and Tamara Todres, who have previously staged award-winning productions of plays such as The Welkin, Dance Nation, and Ironbound. Also appearing in the cast are many local favorites, including: Geoff Davin, Josh Inocalla, Bakari King, Joe Mobley, Candace-Omnira Lafayette, Wesley Paine, Meggan Utech, and Ayla Williams.

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