Theatre UAB Joins Worldwide Reading of New Play on BP Oil Spill

As the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill nears, Theatre UAB will be among a select group of theater companies in the United States and abroad to stage a reading of a new play about the disaster, “The Way of Water.”  

Written by Caridad Svich, “The Way of Water” examines the aftermath of the oil spill and its effects on health and the environment in the Gulf region; the mass reading has been organized by NoPassport theatre alliance to raise awareness of those issues.

UAB Department of Theatre Chair Kelly Allison, M.F.A., says Svich asked Theatre UAB to participate, and UAB is the only Alabama venue to stage a reading. The free performance will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 28, 2012, in the Alys Stephens Center Odess Theatre, 1200 10th Ave. South.
The two-act, 110-minute play is the story of four people — two men, two women — doing the best they can as the devastation in the Gulf is played out on a human scale. It explores poverty in America, rumors and truth and the quest for an honorable life. Read more online at www.nopassport.org/wayofwater.

UAB’s Karla Koskinen will direct an all-Theatre UAB faculty cast: Dennis McLernon, Marlene Johnson, Jack Cannon and Cheryl Hall. Theatre student Noah Holcomb of Birmingham will read the stage directions.

Seating is limited. An audience talkback will be held after the reading. Call the Alys Stephens Center at 205-975-2787 or visit the UAB Department of Theatre at www.uab.edu/theatre.

Among the participating U.S. venues are American Stage Theatre Company in St. Petersburg, Fla; Austin Scriptworks in Austin, Texas; California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif.; Cornell University’s Teatrotaller and Theatre Incognita in Ithaca, N.Y.; East LA Rep in Los Angeles; Emerson College and Atomic Age Theater Company in Boston, Mass.; Frank Theatre in Minneapolis, Minn.; ion theatre company in San Diego; Main Street Theatre in Houston; Teatro Paraguas in Santa Fe and Vortex Theatre in Albuquerque, N.M.; and more than 20 universities nationwide, including Carnegie Mellon and University of California-Davis. International participants will include Aberystwyth University in Wales; Leeds University Workshop Theatre and Rose Bruford College in England; Pat the Dog in Ontario, Canada, and venues in Berlin, Sao Paolo, Australia and South Africa.

Svich’s other plays include “12 Ophelias,” “Iphigenia…a rave fable” and “The House of the Spirits,” based on the novel by Isabel Allende.

By: Shannon Thomason