Fri 5/27-Sun 6/5
Cleveland’s new Playwrights Local 4181 was founded to encourage the work of new area playwrights by producing their work. The group, which hosted a three-day series of workshop events earlier this spring as its first major event, is now presenting its first regular production, the world premiere of To the Orchard by Les Hunter, an assistant professor of English at Baldwin Wallace.
The play grapples with issues of culture and identity through a young Brooklyn College student from an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn who comes out to her father shortly after her mother’s death and deals with the ensuing fallout. In doing so it incorporates elements of magical realism with appearances from Robert Plant and Virginia Woolf and dreamlike scenes from Edwardian-era England and pre-World War II Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.
Hunter, who is Jewish (but not Orthodox) and got his masters degree at Brooklyn College where the play takes place, says he did extensive research for the work.
“I didn’t grow up in an Orthodox Jewish family, so, there was a lot of stuff that I didn’t know, especially [having] to do with the intersection of the gay community and the Jewish community, I didn’t know anything about that,” he says. “I spent a lot of time reaching out to people who do come from that world, and who’ve struggled with that splitting of identity. I spent a lot of time with an organization called Orthodykes, who were very helpful. They were awesome, actually.”
The show will be performed Fri 5/27-Sun 6/5 at North Collinwood’s Waterloo Arts and Fri 6/10-Sun 6/12 at Dobama Theatre. Tickets are $15; $12 for seniors; $10 for students.
playwrightslocal.org/to-the-orchard/