The New Frontier Series follows four playwrights and their creative teams as they embark on new commissions. More info and production dates for each play are below.

CROPT

Written by Daria Miyeko Marinelli

Directed by Mikael Burke

Dramaturgy by Hannah Hopkins

PERFORMANCE DATES:

Rough Cut Reading: December 8th, 2020 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre

Paper’s Edge Presentation: April 16th & 17th, 2021 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre

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SYNOPSIS:

It’s like the new avocado toast. But BETTER.

Moving from the fig orchards of United Farm Workers to the brunch tables of Instagram It Girls to the data server farms of Instagram itself, CROPT is a connective triptych that investigates the systematic violence inherent in the millennial bourgeois life that some of us have grown into/aspire towards to ask what is the price of that perfect brunch photo.

BEING JULIA

ROBERTS

Written by Omer Abbas Salem

Directed by Sophiyaa Nayar

Dramaturgy by Nadya Naumaan

PERFORMANCE DATES:

Rough Cut Reading: December 10th, 2020 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre
Paper’s Edge Presentation: April 30th & March 1st, 2021 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre

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SYNOPSIS:

Having moved to the US from Iraq weeks before 9/11, the Kazem family are already targeted for their accents and names and it only gets worse. What happens when their 25 year old son wakes up one morning, truly believing he's Julia Roberts and greets the world with a voice that sounds like her American one and can only speak in her colloquial dialogue? Can they use his Americanized voice to their advantage and what does it mean to not fight for the old one's return?

MICHAEL JACKSON

AND THE DEVIL'S BOOK

Written by Terry Guest

Directed by Wardell Julius Clark

Dramaturgy by Jared Bellot

PERFORMANCE DATES:

Rough Cut Reading: December 15th, 2020 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre
Paper’s Edge Presentation: May 14th & 15th, 2021 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre

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SYNOPSIS:

Would you sign over your life for immortality? Michael Jackson and The Devil’s Book is a macabre fantasia that uses the myth of The King of Pop to explore Black Celebrity, madness, greed, murder and The American Dream. A multitude of Black superstars (Including Bill Cosby, Beyonce, OJ Simpson, The Obamas, Michael Jordan, Oprah, etc) appear out of the shadows to tell the story of what happens to a person who becomes a God.

P A N G E A

Written by Calamity West

Directed by Regina Victor

Dramaturgy by Will Kiley

PERFORMANCE DATES:

Rough Cut Reading: December 17th, 2020 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre 
Paper’s Edge Presentation: May 28th & 29th, 2021 | youtube.com/JackalopeTheatre

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SYNOPSIS:

It’s 2020 and Calamity West is thinking about a new play – a fantasia. While the trees in her courtyard building are being axed down, and the gates of Graceland Cemetery are falling, Calamity begins receiving texts from unknown numbers in Missouri that demand answers. Contact tracing her own loss of innocence, our playwright must explore the continental divide of the present and past in this Metamodern saga: P A N G E A.