5X5 Reading Series
Reviews
Next Readings:
- Monday, Oct 16, 2023, 7:00 PM
- Monday, Dec 4, 2023, 7:00 PM
- Monday, Feb 5, 2024, 7:00 PM
- Monday, Mar 11, 2024, 7:00 PM
- Monday, Apr 22, 2024, 7:00 PM
- *Seating is General Admission
- Single Ticket – $15.00
- 25-and-Under & Student Ticket – $10.00
- 5X5 Reading Series Package: $50 | $30 Student Package
- PRO TIP: Looking for a subscription? Head to the single tickets page and add all the 5×5 performances to your cart. The pricing will adjust automatically at checkout.
Past Performances:
- Monday, May 1, 2023 | 7PM
"...women have, historically, absorbed the fact of our powerlessness and translated it into worthlessness."
Tracy Sunderland as Heidi Schreck
Ben Clegg as Legionnaire
Alma Ceja as Debate Champion
Winner Best American Play, NY Drama Critics’ Circle, Obie Award
Playwright Heidi Schreck’s boundary-breaking play breathes new life into our Constitution and imagines how it will shape the next generation of Americans. In this hilarious, hopeful, and achingly human new play, she resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives.
REVIEW: “The great-great-granddaughter of a mail order bride who’d made none of her own choices, could not own property, vote or even reasonably expect to find refuge from violence, commands a stage in the greatest city in the world, and is changing the terms of a debate.”
In 1986, the 15-year-old Heidi Schreck “had to know the Constitution backwards and forwards, to be ready to recite any of its 26 amendments, and to expound on the interpretations of their clauses” …as she “earned all of her future college tuition funds by winning constitution speech competitions. …She loved the Constitution, and thought it was perfect.” It didn’t “occur to her back then that the specific interests of her gender- along with those of immigrants, black and brown people, among others- were almost entirely unrepresented in the pages of our founding document.”
In “the first half of the show, Shreck steps behind a podium to portray her former self, answering rapid-fire questions from a white man sitting to her left and wearing a veteran’s cap. …She engages the audience throughout. At one point she asks white, male property-holders to raise their hands. …toward the end of the show, “Thursday Williams, the brilliant African American high school senior, enters stage left to debate Schreck. She sowed hope in a hopeless place. …It was a thrill worth the price of admission to listen to two smart women make smart points, without rancor or ill will or personal insults.
…This play made me wish our education system still fostered the art of rigorous, respectful debate.” –Sheela Clary, The Berkshire Edge
Directed by Jessica Ires Morris
Tracy Sunderland
Ben Clegg
Alma Ceja
Synopsis: Sofia was recently hired as an empathy coach at a debt collection agency—and clearly, she has her work cut out for her. These employees can barely identify what an emotion is, much less practice deep, radical compassion for others. And while they painstakingly stumble towards enlightenment, someone keeps mugging Eva in the kitchen. An outrageous comedy about the absurdity—and the danger—of a world where some people’s feelings matter more than others’.
“If Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s Do You Feel Anger were a person, it might be some wild-eyed combination of Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live and Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. It’s funny, it’s mordant, and it keeps you on edge with a loopiness that masks something somber and truly frightening. The play is a surreal office satire with fangs, a compact meditation on violence, fear, and the kind of weary, twitchy compliance that results from day after day of normalized aggression.” –Vulture
“Ms. Nelson-Greenberg has had the inspired notion of translating everyday sexism into the ostensibly nonsensical language of absurdism, as it was practiced by the likes of Eugene Ionesco, the young Edward Albee and, more recently, Christopher Durang… The spasmodic art of conversation that’s practiced by the overgrown boys of “Anger” is sometimes flat-out hilarious. But what the male co-workers find genuinely funny turns out to be a lot more inane, and a lot scarier.” –NY TIMES
- TUESDAY, March 14, 2023 | 7PM
by Mara Nelson-Greenberg
Directed by Lily Yasuda
Strong language, sexual references and suggestions of physical violence.
(But also SUPER FUNNY).
CAST:
- Eva – Russell Wilson
- Sophia – Zoë Kelly
- Jon – Jovani Zambrano
- Howie – Nick Garcia
- Jordan – Jacob Atkinson
- Old Man – Stitch Marker
- Sophia’s Mother/Janie – Denise Simone
Upcoming Dates:
- February 6, 2023 | 7PM
Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau
Runs ~90 mins with no intermission
Synopsis: Nya, an inner-city public high school teacher, is committed to her students but desperate to give her only son Omari opportunities they’ll never have. When a controversial incident at his upstate private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must confront his rage and her own choices as a parent. But will she be able to reach him before a world beyond her control pulls him away?
With profound compassion and lyricism, Pipeline brings an urgent conversation powerfully to the fore. Morisseau pens a deeply moving story of a mother’s fight to give her son a future — without turning her back on the community that made him who he is.
“The title refers to two different kinds of institutionalized segregation. In the first, “gifted and talented” students are culled from the public-school crowd and given accelerated classroom experiences. The second refers to the schools-to-prison syndrome that plagues poor, mostly inner-city, and mostly African-American families. That appears to have been the fate in store for Omari…, whose recently divorced parents have separated him from public schools and shipped him off to prep school in the hope of improving his chances of avoiding one kind of pipeline and benefitting from another.
…Pipeline is at once an homage to such authors as Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes and Amiri Baraka and yet firmly the product of a unique, deeply resonant sensibility.” – Deadline, Read More
CAST:
- Xavier – Kelcey Watson
- Omari – John Wicks
- Nya – Joy DeMichelle
- Dun- Tim Starks
- Jasmine – Talia Martinez
- Laurie – Jessica Ires Morris
- With Jovani Zambrano
“We Real Cool,” Gwendolyn Brooks’ brief but famous poem, plays a major part in this play and honestly, it gives us a great reason to listen to Morgan Freeman. On repeat. You’re welcome.
We Real Cool
BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS
- December 19, 2022 | 7PM
Miracle on South Division Street (Holiday Version) by Tom Dudzick
Directed by Jessica Ires Morris
Synopsis:
We meet the Nowaks of Buffalo, NY, gathering at the shabby old homestead to commemorate the family “miracle” as is their Christmas ritual. According to family lore, on Christmas Eve in 1942, the Blessed Mother herself appeared to Grandpa in the family barbershop. Now Clara, the family matriarch, happily tends to the family heirloom, a twenty-foot memorial shrine to the Virgin Mary which adjoins the house. As daughter Ruth unveils her plan to write and star in a one-woman Christmas show about the family miracle so the “whole world will know,” the entire family’s faith is shaken to the very core when a deathbed confession causes the family legend to unravel. The results are heartfelt and hilarious!Cast:
Denise Simone
Veronica Von Tobel
Sasha Allen-Grieve
Taylor Hawker
Clara’s three grown children are testing her patience and her faith: one stopped going to Mass, another has a Christmas Eve date with an ex-priest, and one has been “bowling with a Jewish girl — and Clara knows full well where bowling leads.” The playwright’s cleverly constructed dominos tie up seemingly loose ends “in a breezy but heartfelt message about tolerance.” –Philip Brandes, Los Angeles Times
- November 7, 2022 | 7PM
Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery
2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Finalist
2020 Obie Award for Playwriting
Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play
New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play
Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Playwriting Award
Synopsis: It’s nearing midnight in Wyoming, where four young conservatives have gathered at a backyard after-party. They’ve returned home to toast their mentor Gina, newly inducted as president of a tiny Catholic college. But as their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, it becomes less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a chilly night in the middle of America, Will Arbery’s haunting play offers grace and disarming clarity, speaking to the heart of a country at war with itself.
Directed by Jessica Ires Morris, AEA/SAG-AFTRA. At BCT Jessica has directed and performed in several 5×5 and CRS readings and appeared in Clarkston, on the mainstage. She is a proud TheaterLab instructor. Jessica also teaches Acting at BSU and is a frequent lecturer with the Osher Institute. She earned a BA from Smith College in Massachusetts and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. Jessica was a long-time company member of the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey and has performed in regional theaters all over the country, as well as on film and TV. She is wildly grateful for Boise audiences, all of her students (past and present), and all the Burdick boys.
CAST LIST:
Lynn Allison Hofflund as Gina – Lynn Allison is known primarily for her brilliant work as a beloved veteran Boise actor [RED HOT PATRIOT: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, ANN, With Love and Major Organ], but also for the world premiere of her first effort as a playwright, Off the Record at BCT.
Davey Collins as Kevin – Davey Collins (he/him) is so excited to be back with his buddies at BCT. He loves this place and is an ardent believer in the endless wonder and bravery of creatives in this region. Previous credits: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (BCT); Stuart Little, The Magician’s Nephew (ITY); Small Matters, Another Agatha at Treefort 2021 (Migration Theory).
Jake Atkinson as Justin – Jake is a Boise native and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, LA. You may have seen him in recent productions at Boise Little Theater, Alley Rep’s Hot Asian Doctor Husband, or doing improv with Recycled Minds and Creatively.
Zoë Kelly as Theresa – Zoë Kelly is a senior theater arts major at BSU and has been in productions across the Treasure Valley [The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Pride and Prejudice, The Rocky Horror Show].
Amela Karadza as Emily – Amela Karadza was born in Bosnia and at age 5 immigrated to Boise where she has spent many delightful years. She’s a recent graduate of Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts, MFA program. Some of her favorite roles include Joan (Vinegar Tom/Theatre C and Rutgers Theatre Co.), Duke of Aumerle (Richard II at Shakespeare’s Globe in London), and #2 (The Wolves/Boise Contemporary Theater). She’s a proud member of AEA.
UPCOMING SHOWS & EVENTS
