Word For Word's Off The Page Reading Series Runs Beginning This Month

Word for Word's Off the Page Staged Reading Series 2022 begins on July 25 with Black Box, by Jennifer Egan, directed by Vanessa Flores on the Z Below Stage in San Francisco. Word for Word's Off the Page staged reading series is the public's first look at pieces Word for Word is considering for upcoming productions. With a public staged reading of a short story, they invite audiences to see the steps of their process of bringing a work from the page to the stage in the Word for Word style. After the reading, the audience is encouraged to engage in a conversation with the company, which gives valuable feedback as they decide on the next steps of a work's development. Readings are at 7 pm for info: http://www.zspace.org/offthepage

The July 25 first event of 2022's Off the Page Staged Reading Series is "Black Box" a science fiction short story published in May 2012 by American writer Jennifer Egan. It was released in an unusual serialized format: as a series of tweets on The New Yorker's Twitter account over nine days beginning May 25, 2012. The story is in the form of "mental dispatches" from a spy living in the Mediterranean area in the near future.

Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was chosen as New York City's One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was recently named one of the best books of the decade by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine, and she recently completed a term as President of PEN America. Her new novel, The Candy House, a sibling to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was published in April, 2022.

Vanessa Flores (director) is a playwright, short story writer, screenwriter and performer with an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts (2016). Her plays have been produced by SF Playground, SF Olympians, Double Backbone, and Aluminous Theater. In August 2018, her full-length play Where the Boys Are was produced by Faultline Theater. In 2019, she premiered Uneasy, a web series about two women of color trying to maintain their challenging lifestyle as artists in Oakland. In 2020, Vanessa launched Other Hand, a multi-media storytelling company creating on the basis of experimentation, vulnerability, and play. Vanessa is a Word for Word Core Company Member and a writer, singer, and keyboardist for the San Francisco based funny-girl-band, Lentil.

Word for Word Performing Arts Company, a program of Z Space, is an ensemble whose mission is to tell great stories with elegant theatricality, staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction. Founded in 1993 by Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter, Word for Word believes in the power of the short story to provide solace, compassion, and insight into our daily lives.

Word for Word's Off the Page Staged Reading Series 2022 Continues

August 8: Children of the Sea, by Edwidge Danticat,

Directed by Margo Hall

A young man on a boat flees to America for asylum while a young woman, his lover, stays behind in Haiti trying to survive increasing violence and chaos. In the face of senseless brutality and adversity, the two write letters to each other they can never send.

September 4: Eternal Love, by Karen Bender

Directed by Amy Kossow

Ella nervously chaperones her developmentally disabled daughter Lena's honeymoon. Told with wit and compassion, we accompany Ella as she learns to let go and see her daughter as an independent adult.

October 3: The Second Bakery Attack and Bakery Attack, by Haruki Murakami,

Directed by Keiko Shimosato Carreiro

Two related stories by one of fiction's most beloved authors. A newly married couple realizes they have a lot to learn about each other after they're both seized by an insatiable hunger in the middle of the night. Stirred by her husband's revelation about an impulsive event from his youth, the wife takes control and leads them into the night to satiate their bottomless hunger.

November 7: Raymond's Run and Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird,

by Toni Cade Bambara,

Directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe

Two from Bambara's beloved 1972 collection, Gorilla My Love, feature the sassy and tough young Hazel - known to family and friends as Squeaky - as she defends her title as the fastest runner in her Harlem neighborhood, takes care of her big brother Raymond, and rails against the injustices of childhood.

Word for Word's Off the Page Staged Reading Series 2022

July 25: Black Box, by Jennifer Egan, Directed by Vanessa Flores

August 8: Children of the Sea, by Edwidge Danticat, Directed by Margo Hall

September 4: Eternal Love, by Karen Bender, Directed by Amy Kossow

October 3: The Second Bakery Attack and Bakery Attack, by Haruki Murakami,

Directed by Keiko Shimosato Carreiro

November 7: Raymond's Run and Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird, by Toni Cade Bambara, Directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe

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