EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of
Beyond Words
written by Laura Maria Censabella*
Directed by Melissa Crespo
featuring Michael Frederic, David Greenspan, Alex Herrald*, Antwayn Hopper, Wonjung Kim, Antoinette LaVecchia, & Nancy Rodriguez
Beyond Words dramatizes the mysterious relationship between human beings and birds through a 30-year groundbreaking experiment that captures our longing to communicate with animals.
Sarah Gwynne Walker, Stage Manager
This reading is closed to the public.
* indicates EST Member Artist
Laura Maria Censabella’s play Paradise (IRNE Award Best New Play, Elliott Norton Nomination Outstanding New Script, Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Science Foundation Commission) recently made its sold-out U.S. west coast premiere in L.A. at The Odyssey Theatre (Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, producers) and premiered on the east coast at Underground Railroad/Central Square Theater in Cambridge. She then wrote the screenplay for Vicangelo Films and JuVee Productions. Ms. Censabella is the recipient of the $10,000 William Saroyan Human Rights Award for her play Carla Cooks The War, three grants in Playwriting and Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and two Daytime Emmy Awards. Other plays and musicals have been developed or produced at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, the Women’s Project and Productions, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Portland Stage, the New Harmony Project, Gulfshore Playhouse, The Working Theatre, Luna Stage, Passage Theatre, and Urban Stages, among others. She directs the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Playwrights Unit and teaches at the New School for Drama where she received the Distinguished University-Wide Teaching Award. She is a graduate of Yale--Wole Soyinka, Nikos Psacharopoulos, Michael Roemer, Anthony Davis, and Henry Louis Gates were some of her teachers--and is a proud member of HONOR ROLL! an action and advocacy group of women+ playwrights over 40.
Throughout the First Light festival, we are advocating for an exciting non-profit organization called Black Girls Do STEM. Support them with a gift, if you can!
Black Girls Do STEM is a diversifying innovation, empowering Black girls to achieve equitable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) representation. By creating a culturally unique learning space, we give room for cognitive and mental resilience. This lends to development of a STEM mindset and belief in their STEM capability, while placing positive role models who look like them right in their path. Through our core values of scholarship, training, empowerment (equity), and mentorship, we trigger curiosity in the minds of Black girls building confidence, skills, and the future STEM workforce. Please visit their website to learn more and support them today.
Beyond Words is part of this season's First Light Festival, learn more about the festival and other plays like this here.