Keegan Opens 23rd Season with World Premiere of WEST BY GOD

The Keegan Theatre announces the cast and creative team of Brandon McCoy's heartwarming new play WEST BY GOD, making its world premiere on September 27, 2019 at The Andrew Keegan Theatre in Washington, DC. Following its premiere in DC, WEST BY GOD will travel to West Virginia in the first ever KeeganConnects tour, a new annual initiative designed to take original, provocative plays to small towns and communities nationwide. The press opening is slated for October 1, 2019.

WEST BY GOD is a story about home. In a small town in the Appalachia region of West Virginia, two different families grapple with issues of grief and love, memory and identity, and with the distance and time that both unite and divide generations. A new play by West Virginia native Brandon McCoy, WEST BY GOD is a funny, heartwarming, and gut-wrenchingly honest examination of the divide between urban and rural America, and the kinds of prejudice and intolerance too often left unchallenged in our society

WEST BY GOD is directed by Keegan company member Jeremy Skidmore and features actors Rena Cherry Brown, Kevin Hasser, Sheri S. Herren, DeJeanette Horne, Susan Marie Rhea, Neely Seams (WV tour), Colin Smith, Karen Novack and Rachel Trauner (DC world premiere). The WEST BY GOD creative team includes Sydney Moore (Costume Design), Cindy Landrum Jacobs (Properties/Set Dressing Design), Matthew J. Keenan (Set Design), Brandon McCoy (Sound Design), and Nikki Hoffpauir and Michael Innocenti (Stage Managers).

The WEST BY GOD tour begins in January 2020, when the play will be staged at Marshall University in Huntington, WV over two weekends, and theatre workshops, audience talkbacks, and other community engagement events will be offered in collaboration with other local theatres and non-profit organizations. This KeeganConnects tour of West Virginia will bring a socially important play to a region with a burgeoning arts scene, bolstering the local artistic community and engaging audience members in both DC and Appalachia in a critical dialogue about perception and humanity.

"Why do we see so much time spent arguing against belittling certain groups, but it remains acceptable, and sometimes encouraged, to marginalize rural America? In response to this question, I wrote the play WEST BY GOD," says playwright Brandon McCoy. "WEST BY GOD is a play that examines the idea of what makes a home. We all need a place where we feel like we belong, and this story shows us how complicated of a notion this can be. I am excited that WEST BY GOD has been selected for the KeeganConnects tour, beginning a new chapter in Keegan's long history of touring important works outside the DC region."

WEST BY GOD runs in Washington, DC, September 27 through October 20, 2019, at The Keegan Theatre in Washington, DC. The press opening is Tuesday, October 1, 2019. This is Keegan Theatre's 23nd season performing in Washington, DC. The Keegan Theatre produces powerful productions of classic and modern plays and musicals, offered to the community at affordable prices. Our work is fueled by extraordinary artists in an intimate venue, scripts that put real people out there on the stark edges of life, and an approach to the work that honors clear and authentic storytelling.

An annual initiative designed to take original, provocative plays to small towns and communities nationwide, the KeeganConnects tour will include affordable performances, theatre workshops, and audience engagement events that will forge connections between DC's thriving theatre community and smaller professional and community theatres around the country.

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