PAST PRODUCTIONS
Alicia's Miracle
Playwright: Octavio Solis
Director: Jennifer Welch
Locations: San Francisco and Oxnard, CA
Newsroom: Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting (Berniece Yeung and Andy Donahue)
Steeped in the tradition of El Teatro Camposino and performed in English and Spanish, Alicia's Miracle reveals the eroded regulations and hidden impacts of agricultural fumigants in California's billion-dollar strawberry industry. Through the eyes of a pregnant mother, a day laborer, a government official and others, we learn how complex and pervasive this threat has become.
A Guide to the Aftermath
Playwright: Jon Bernson
Director: Jennifer Welch
Location: San Francisco, CA
Newsroom: Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting (Mimi Chakarova)
Aftermath depicts the struggles of a female veteran of the Iraq War, living on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Through her story, we experience the reverberations of combat that many veterans experience after returning home, and the compounded effects of military sexual trauma that have become tragically pervasive.
Beautiful Agitators
Playwrights: Aallyah Wright, Jessica James, Charles Coleman and Nick Houston
Director: Jennifer Welch
Locations: Clarksdale, Cleveland and Tutwiler, MS
Newsroom: Mississippi Today (Aallyah Wright and Jennifer Welch)
Headquartered at her beauty shop in downtown Clarksdale, Mississippi, Vera Mae Pigee played was an instrumental figure in the fight for equality in Mississippi: from her efforts organizing direct action with young people to registering thousands of African Americans to vote.
Beneath an Unknown Sky
Written and Directed by Jennifer Welch
Location: Clarksdale, Mississippi
Newsroom: StoryWorks (Aallyah Wright, Rebecca Welch Weigel & Jennifer Welch)
Beneath an Unknown Sky is a multi-platform oral history, interpretation and education project that examines the impact of Reconstruction, the Freedmen's Bureau, the inspired participation of Black voters to elect representative leadership on a local and national level and the brutal repercussions of their success.
Cycles
Playwright: Milta Ortiz
Director: Jennifer Welch
Location: Tucson, AZ / Virtual Performance
Newsroom: Arizona Daily Star (Patty Machelor and Perla Treviso)
Based on the Arizona Daily Star’s year-long investigation into Arizona’s foster care system. Set in Tucson, Cycles follows the lives of an unlikely pair of teens who bond at Pima County’s juvenile detention facility and support each other as they struggle to navigate the state’s system.
Hair-Itage Project
Written by Hair-Itage Project Ensemble Members
Directed by Layla Young & Jennifer Welch
Location: Clarksdale, Mississippi
Newsroom: StoryWorks (Jennifer Welch)
The Hair-Itage Project is a multi-platform oral history, theater and education project that examines how black-owned barber shops and beauty salons contributed to the civil rights movement, the social and political conversations surrounding black hair, and the role of salons and barber shops as vital community spaces.
Headlock
Playwright: William Bivins
Director: Jennifer Welch
Location: San Francisco, CA
Newsroom: The Center for Investigative Reporting (Ryan Gabrielson)
Headlock was written by William Bivins and directed by Jennifer Welch based on Ryan Gabrielson’s investigation into abuse at California’s adult care facilities.
Journey to Emeraldville
Playwright: Eugenie Chan
Director: Jennifer Welch
Location: San Francisco, CA
Newsroom: Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting (Shoshana Walter)
Set in Humboldt County, California’s secretive marijuana industry, where whispers of sexual abuse and trafficking haunt a culture established by free-spirited back-to-the-landers.
Justice in the Embers
Playwright: Michelle T. Johnson
Director: Jennifer Welch
Locations: Kansas City, MO and Oakland, CA
Newsroom: Kansas City Public Television, Kansas City Star and Reveal (Mike McGraw and Jennifer Welch)
Inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mike McGraw’s investigation into the tragic explosion that killed six Kansas City, Missouri, firefighters and the shockwaves that are still being felt in the community, decades later.
Mrs. Carter & the Sunflower Seven
Written by Jennifer Welch
Directed by Layla Young & Jennifer Welch
Location: Drew, Mississippi
Newsroom: StoryWorks (Aallyah Wright, Rebecca Welch Weigel & Jennifer Welch)
Set in 1965 in Drew, Mississippi, Mrs. Carter and the Sunflower Seven tells the story of the Carter family's fight to desegregate their local public schools. Claiming their right under the 'freedom of choice' plan, seven of the Carter children bravely stepped on to the front line of the civil rights movement and attended the previously all-white schools. They were subjected to harassment, threats of violence and intimidation but the Carters stood firm and changed the course of history.
North by Inferno
Playwright: Jon Bernson
Director: Jennifer Welch
Locations: Williston, Grand Forks and Bismark, ND, Oakland, CA
Newsroom: Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting (Jennifer Gollan)
North by Inferno depicts the deadliest explosion in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields in the last decade. In a series of intimate and brutal snapshots, the play confronts the circumstances that led to this tragedy and gives voice to the conflicting loyalties of workers who have flocked to the Bakken from around the country.
Overnighters Is Over
Playwright: Jon Bernson
Filmmaker: Jesse Moss
Director: Jennifer Welch
Location: Los Angeles, CA
International Documentary Association and the Academy of Motion Pictures
Based on “The Overnighters,” a Sundance award-winning documentary by Jesse Moss. This play explores ongoing stories about the film’s principal subjects, sheds light on Moss’ 18-month filmmaking process and draws connections between the contentious forces that have placed North Dakota at the center of international energy conflicts.
Terra Incognita
Playwright: R.N. Sandberg
Director: Jim Jack
Location: Newark, NJ
Newsroom: NJTV News with Mary Alice Williams (Brenda Flanagan)
An absurd dark comedy about a New Jersey family. Joseph and Lena have just paid off their mortgage and are looking forward to a bright and beautiful future until they discover that the UST(Underground Gas Storage Tank) in their backyard is leaking. Suddenly their life becomes a labyrinth of complex, bizarre and illogical attempts to clean up the fuel soaked soil beneath their home and prevent it from contaminating the groundwater and their marriage.
Wade Through the Waters
Written by Aallyah Wright & Jennifer Welch
Directed by Jennifer Welch
Location: Shaw, Mississippi
Newsroom: StoryWorks (Aallyah Wright & Jennifer Welch)
In Shaw, Mississippi, Andrew and Mary Lou Hawkins along with the NAACP Legal Defense fund organized the black citizens of their town to file a class-action lawsuit and sue the town’s white leadership in federal court. This is the story of how they organized, the landmark court ruling in their favor and the deadly consequences for the Hawkins family.
This Is Home
Playwrights: Tassianna Willis, Dante Clark, Will Houston and Deandre Evans
Directors: Jennifer Welch and Jose Vadi
Location: San Francisco, CA
Newsrooms: Reveal and The San Francisco Chronicle (Amy Julia Harris)
Sourced from reporter Amy Julia Harris’ Subsidized Squalor investigation and the poets’ own observations, interviews with sources and visits to the dilapidated buildings, the play explores the concept of “home” through the eyes of Richmond, CA residents living – and surviving – amid atrocious conditions in the Hacienda and Nevin housing projects.
When Lighting the Voids
Written by Jon Bernson
Directed by Jennifer Welch
Location: Biloxi, Mississippi & New Orleans, Louisiana
Newsroom: Reveal & The Center for Investigative Reporting (Jennifer Gollan)
When Lighting The Voids is a deconstructed mystery that explores the causes of a tragic explosion at an Escatawpa, Mississippi shipyard. Constructed from interviews with OSHA investigators, shipyard workers, lawyers and family members of the deceased, the play explores not only what happened, but the trauma inflicted by the accident and the lives that continue to be affected to this day.
Tomorrow, Inshallah
Playwright: Rehana Lew Mirza
Director: Jennifer Welch
Location: Detroit, MI and Lincoln, NE
Newsroom: HuffPost (Rowaida Abdelaziz and Chris Mathais)
As immigration dominates the national conversation Tomorrow, Inshallah holds a mirror to the American heartland and reflects the beauty and brutality of what it means to be Muslim in America today. The play is a collage based on interviews from HuffPost reporters Rowaida Abdelaziz and Chris Mathias delving into the realities of everyday existence and one catastrophic event that exemplifies the depth of misunderstanding and distrust that in the end, affects us all.