Photos: Roger Q. Mason Presents WAITING FOR A WAKE Reading With Page 73 At Open Jar Studios

Acclaimed Black Filipinx playwright and Kilroys List honoree Roger Q. Mason received a developmental reading of their new play Waiting for a Wake with Page 73 at Open Jar Studios on Friday, April 21. The reading was directed by Timothy Douglas with dramaturgy by Gaven Trinidad. The cast featured Jalen Coleman as Jason, Evander Duck Jr. as Ovid, Hayward Leach as Quentin, and Ching Valdes-Aran as Divinia with Stage Directions by Rishi Mutalik. The Stage Manager was Alyssa K. Howard.

See photos below! Photos courtesy of Michael Kushner Photography. 

Meet the Brickstones: Quentin dreams of escaping the nest at 30 years old through fashion design. His father Ovid wants to write his memoirs - and make all his family members his secretaries. His mother Divinia pines for peace in the house and runs away often to find it. And Jason plays video games in his room to quell the rage he exhibits when things don't go his way. As we spend one day in their house, once a beacon of social mobility, we see a Black and Filipino family deferred from their American dreams by co-dependence, mental illness and mutual financial abuse. How will they survive their lives without destroying each other completely?

Inspired by the tradition of the American Family drama, Waiting for a Wake is a post-kitchen sink drama which will establish black and brown folks as the new protagonists of the American Dream and its struggles. Waiting for a Wake was originally commissioned by Leviathan Lab (Ariel Estrada, Founder & Producing Artistic Director).