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Magic Theatre's 2018-2019 Season will include the World Premiere of Ashlin Halfnight's The Resting Place; the World Premiere of Mfoniso Udofia's In Old Age; and an anniversary revival of Luis Alfaro's critically acclaimed Oedipus el Rey, which premiered at Magic Theatre nine years ago. The Season will also include Magic's beloved, annual Virgin Play Festival.
Weekday subscriptions include one ticket to each of the three shows to any weekday performance as well as a pass to the Virgin Play Festival.
Weekend subscriptions include one ticket to each of the three shows to any weekend performance as well as a pass to the Virgin Play Festival.
Flex Pass subscriptions include three tickets to be used as you choose as well as a pass to the Virgin Play Festival.
NextGen subscriptions include one ticket to each of the three shows as well as a pass to Virgin Play Festival. NextGen Subscriptions are for patrons 35 & under, proof of age required.
The Resting Place is a provocative and intense look at an American Family in a cloudburst of crisis—filled with raw humor, piercing darkness and fierce love. Ashlin Halfnight (Magic Virgin Play Festival 2017) addresses familial obligation, and asks: what do we owe each other?
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When Azell Abernathy, a seasoned repairman, arrives at the home of Abasiama Ufot to redo the floors of her dilapidated New England home, he is surprised to be met with stubborn resistance. The two clash, challenge each other, and eventually form an unlikely spiritual connection as they teach each other the true nature of forgiveness and love.
In Old Age is the fifth installment of Udofia’s Ufot family cycle, offers a purge and a peacemaking; frenzy and faith.
Set in South Central LA, Oedipus el Rey is a gritty and electrifying take on the Greek tragedy, written by the acclaimed Magic playwright Luis Alfaro. Oedipus is reimagined as a young man whose dreams of controlling his own destiny soar beyond the prison walls where he’s spent his life. In a place where everyone is trapped by desperation, violence, and history, can one man transcend his own story? Love, family, and belief collide in this chilling, muscular odyssey that asks: what’s fate and what’s just the system?
Our play festival centers on bringing emerging and mid-career playwrights together, giving each writer the time and space to create and experiment and hear their work out loud.
It's an exciting opportunity for writers to get space and time to work, for us to get to know new playwrights and familiar playwright's work, and for our audience to meet new playwrights and new plays. We invite Magic Family patrons to join us for readings presenting new work by writers we love.
Recent writers have included: Jessica Hagedorn, Ashlin Halfnight, Barbara Hammond, John Kolvenbach, Lauren Yee, Clare Barron, Dipika Guha, Han Ong, Mfoniso Udofia & many, many more.
The Resting Place is a provocative and intense look at an American Family in a cloudburst of crisis—filled with raw humor, piercing darkness and fierce love. Ashlin Halfnight (Magic Virgin Play Festival 2017) addresses familial obligation, guilt, our own complacency and culpability in wrongdoing and asks, how do we reconcile our love for someone with the knowledge of their horrifying transgression?
Ashlin Halfnight
written by Mfoniso Udofia
directed by Victor Malana Maog
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This season American Conservatory Theater is producing the Fourth play in Udofia's Ufot Family Cycle, Her Portmanteau, which is the perfect precursor for In Old Age.
Traveling from Lagos to visit her mother and American-born sister for the first time in two decades, thirtysomething Iniabasi arrives to a snowy landscape, and even chillier truths inside a small Manhattan apartment. As Nigerian traditions clash with American realities, the family is forced to confront its literal and emotional baggage and its painful legacies across language, continents, and cultures.
was named one of American Theatre Magazine’s “20 Theatre Workers You Should Know” (October 2015). He has directed and developed new works at The Public Theater, Williamstown Theater Festival, Signature Theatre, Mabou Mines, The Lark, New Dramatists, 2g, ABC/Disney, and large-scale stage shows, live events, and spectaculars at Disney Parks Live Entertainment. Maog first gained notice in 2004, when he was one of six directors in the nation to receive the NEA/TCG Career Development Program. He has also been awarded the Van Lier Directing Fellowship at Second Stage, Altvater Fellowship at Cornerstone Theatre Company, and the Presidential Award with the Theatre Arts Project, and was recently chosen as an inaugural TCG SPARK Leader, spotlighting rising arts executives. Vice President, CAATA Board. B.A. in Global Leadership and Performance Studies - NYU/Gallatin. www.victormaog.com
Steven Anthony Jones was the Artistic Director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the premiere African-American Theatre Company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He directed Philip Kan Gotanda's After the War Blues for the UC Berkeley Dept. of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. He has worked professionally on stage, television and in film for 42 years. He has performed in the works of August Wilson, (Charles) Fuller, Fugard, Stoppard, Gotonda, Becket, Pinter, Moliere, Shakespeare, Chekhov and others. He was in the original cast of A Soldier’s Play, produced by the Negro Ensemble Company, which won an Obie Award for ensemble acting and the Pulitzer Prize for best drama. He performed, taught and directed at the American Conservatory Theater for 22 years as a member of the core acting company. His many film and television credits include two seasons of Midnight Caller and a recurring role on the NBC series Trauma. Mr. Jones received his early theatre training at Karamu House in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Other experience includes the Cleveland Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, San Jose Rep, and San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.
When Azell Abernathy, a seasoned repairman,
arrives at the home of Abasiama Ufot to redo the floors of her dilapidated New England home, he is surprised to be met with stubborn resistance. The two clash, challenge each other, and eventually form an unlikely spiritual connection as they teach each other the true
nature of forgiveness and love.
In Old Age is the fifth installment of Udofia’s Ufot family cycle, offers a purge and a peacemaking; frenzy and faith.
a first-generation Nigerian-American storyteller and educator, attended Wellesley College and obtained her MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater. During her stay in the Bay, she co-pioneered a youth initiative, The Nia Project, providing artistic outlets for youth residing in Bayview / Hunter’s Point.
In January 2016 Playwrights Realm produced the world premiere of Sojourners, the origin story of the Ufot Family Cycle. In Spring 2016, The Magic Theatre in San Francisco produced the west coast premiere of Sojourners and the world premiere of the third installation in the Ufot Family Cycle, runboyun, in repertory. New York Theatre Workshop produced the New York City return of Sojourners in Spring 2017, which ran in repertory with the world premiere of Her Portmanteau, which was previously developed in 2015 at the National Black Theatre. She’s the recipient of the 2017 Helen Merrill Playwright Award and the 2017-2018 McKnight National Residency and Commission at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. Her Ufot Cycle play, Her Portmanteau, will be produced Feb 15–Mar 31 at A.C.T.’s Strand Theater, and was recently produced at Pasadena’s Boston Court Performing Arts Center.
Mfoniso is also currently at work on a commission from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, translating Shakespeare’s Othello, through their Play On! program. Mfoniso’s plays have been developed at and/or presented/produced by The New York Theatre Workshop, The Playwrights Realm, The Magic Theatre, Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre, Hedgebrook, Sundance Theatre Lab, NNPN, Space on Ryder Farm, NNPN New Play Showcase, Makehouse, Soul Productions, terraNOVA, I73, The New Black Fest, Rising Circle’s INKTank, At Hand Theatre Company, The Standard Collective, American Slavery Project, Liberation Theatre Company, and more. Mfoniso was a finalist for the 2015 PoNY Prize, the Eugene O’Neill NPC, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Many Voices Fellowship, Page73 Development Programs, Jerome Fellowship, New York Theatre Workshop’s 20/50 Fellowship, and Lark Playwrights’ Week. Follow her at @mfudofia or visit www.mfonisoudofia.com.
"Alfaro may be the first, Sophocles included, to place the love of Oedipus and Jocasta squarely at the play's tragic center. More than that, he makes it resonate with a passion fully enhanced not only by the spare poetry of his text but also by Greco's intense staging and the naked vulnerability of two fully committed actors in the show that opened Wednesday."
— Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle
Set in South Central LA,
Oedipus el Rey is a gritty and electrifying take on the Greek tragedy, written by the acclaimed Magic playwright Luis Alfaro. Oedipus is reimagined as a young man whose dreams of controlling his own destiny soar beyond the prison walls where he’s spent his life. In a place where everyone is trapped by desperation, violence, and history, can one man transcend his own story? Love, family, and belief collide in this chilling, muscular odyssey that asks: what’s fate and what’s just the system?
Luis Alfaro is a Chicano writer/performer known for his work in poetry, theatre, short stories, performance and journalism. He is also a producer/director who spent ten years at the Mark Taper Forum as Associate Producer, Director of New Play Development and co-director of the Latino Theatre Initiative.
His plays and performances include Oedipus el Rey (Magic Theatre, Boston Court Theatre, upcoming at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company) Electricidad (Teatro Vision-San Jose, Mark Taper Forum-Los Angeles, Goodman Theater-Chicago, Borderlands Theatre-Tucson), Downtown (Institute of Contemporary Art-London, XTeresa Performance Space-Mexico City), No Holds Barrio (Goodman Theatre-Chicago), Body of Faith(Cornerstone Theater Company-Los Angeles), Straight as a Line (Primary Stages-NY, Edinburgh Festival-Scotland, Goodman Theatre-Chicago, The National Theatre of Romania [2 year run]) Bitter Homes and Gardens (Latino Chicago, Playwrights Arena-Los Angeles) Ladybird (La Jolla Playhouse) Black Butterfly(Smithsonian Museum, The Kennedy Center-Washington D.C., Mark Taper Forum-Los Angeles) Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner (Taper Too-Los Angeles, Teatro Vista-Chicago). He is the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, popularly known as a "genius grant," awarded to people who have demonstrated expertise and exceptional creativity in their respective fields.
A Rockefeller Fellow and University of California Regents Chair Fellow, he is the only artist to have won two awards in the same year from The Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays. He is also the recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, Theatre Communications Group and PEN USA, among others. He is featured in over 25 anthologies, has an award-winning spoken word CD, and was nominated for a local Emmy Award for his short film, Chicanismo. He is a member of New Dramatists, an associate artist at Playwrights Arena and Cornerstone Theatre Company in Los Angeles. His play Electricidad was featured on the cover of American Theatre Magazine and the complete script was published in the February 2006 issue.
He teaches at the University of Southern California (Graduate Playwriting Program, Solo Performance, Youth Theater) and California Institute of the Arts (Solo Performance, Actors Studio).
Our play festival centers on bringing emerging and mid-career playwrights together, giving each writer the time and space to create and experiment and hear their work out loud. Recent writers have included: Jessica Hagedorn, Ashlin Halfnight, Barbara Hammond, John Kolvenbach, Lauren Yee, Clare Barron, Dipika Guha, Han Ong, Mfoniso Udofia & many, many more. It's an exciting opportunity for writers to get space and time to work, for us to get to know new playwrights and familiar playwright's work, and for our audience to meet new playwrights and new plays. We invite Magic Family patrons to join us for readings presenting new work by writers we love.
