"Mlima’s Tale"

Acclaimed playwright Lynn Nottage, who has twice captured the Pulitzer Prize, scripted this bracing, highly theatrical piece inspired by the illegal ivory trade. An actor, without the crutches of trunk and tusks, portrays the elephant Mlima, whose survival in the savannahs of Kenya is threatened by poachers. Nottage follows the ivory—which is to say the money—through its final destination, a cocktail party in Beijing.