Aurora Theatre Company has announced the company's newest Originate + Generate (O+G) commission, Bay Area playwright Cleavon Smith (The Flats). Smith has been commissioned to create a new play specifically for Aurora. The Working Title of the piece is MORE OFTEN THAN NOT.
O+G is Aurora's new works initiative to promote the creation of forward-looking theatre, including commissions, workshops, readings, and full productions of new plays. Smith will have the opportunity to create the new work through a process of his own devising. Previous O+G artists include Jonathan Spector (award-winning Eureka Day),
Christopher Chen (The Ruler),
Beth Wilmurt (Olga), as well as
Britney Frazier and
Margo Hall (Laveau). Smith will receive financial support in the form of a $5,000 grant and access to various Aurora resources.
This isn't Smith's first Aurora commission. He recently teamed up with
Lauren Gunderson and O+G veteran Spector to co-write the original audio drama The Flats for Aurora's audiences. The Flats had its world premiere in October 2020.
"I've admired Cleavon Smith's work since I originally encountered it at Berkeley's TheatreFirst," said Aurora Artistic Director Josh Costello. "He combines a facility for the interplay between language and idea with an undeniable expression of feeling, of heart. We started talking about an Originate + Generate commission before the pandemic, and when a generous donor made it possible for us to add back in some funding for an artistic project, Cleavon's O+G commission was an easy choice."
For this commission Smith tackles the relevant hot button issues of racial justice and police violence.
"The reality of police violence keeps moving forward for us [Black people]; it's not anything new for us and I want to have a conversation dealing with it," Smith said. "It is part of my personal life and I have a commitment to the liberation and uplifting of our community."
Thomas, a highly regarded author and public intellectual, is brought to the University of California at Berkeley campus to help facilitate conversations concerning extrajudicial police violence. The students find themselves rejecting his middle-ground, #NotAllCops rhetoric, as a member of the UCB Black Student Union was violently beaten by an officer while peacefully protesting. Miriam and Raz, leaders of the BSU, want immediate action, radical reform, and are sick and tired of having to rely on a corrupt system for justice. Nina, the Vice Chancellor of the University, is caught between the demands of the students to shut Thomas down, and loyalty to Thomas, her dearest friend from graduate school.
Aurora's Associate Artistic Director
Dawn Monique Williams is slated to direct.
Said Williams: "Cleavon's writing is so genuine. There is an honesty, there is a poetry, in his voice that resonates so deeply with me. Cleavon is so observant and unassuming that he can get right to the heart of an issue. I am so excited by the conversation to be had with MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, the way this play will engage our community and force us out of binary thinking with regards to racial justice."
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