The innovative young theater company known as The New Colony has announced a slate of three world-premiere plays for its 2016 season, with a fourth still to be announced.
The first, a drama by New Colony co-artistic director Evan Linder titled Byhalia, Mississippi (January 8–February 14), is part of what the company is calling a "world premiere conversation." The play follows a white couple for whom the titular Southern town's long-simmering racial tensions become personal when the wife gives birth to a black child, the result of an affair the year prior. The New Colony's staging, a co-production with the emergent Definition Theatre Company and directed by DTC's Tyrone Phillips, will open simultaneously with productions at Memphis's Playhouse on the Square and Charleston, South Carolina's Village Rep Co.; staged readings will also be held that week at theaters in Birmingham, Alabama, Boulder, Colorado, Los Angeles and Toronto, to be followed by an online discussion for audiences in all seven cities on January 18, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Next on the docket is Even Longer and Farther Away (April 18–May 15), a new Appalachian-set folk tale about two sisters whose secret holds sway over a mountain town, by Chelsea Marcantel and directed by Thrisa Hodits. It's followed by Kin Folk (July 8–August 14), a new piece by William Glick set among the Tumblr-fueled community known as Otherkin, people who identify as at least partially non-human (dragons, wolves and elves are among the more common otherkin identities).
The to-be-named fourth production, like the other three, will be staged at the Den Theatre. The New Colony's newest show, Stanley in the Name of Love, opened at the Den last night and runs through August 29.