From now through March, the Long Beach Playhouse will host new shows from the community every weekend.
Local creatives from all over Long Beach ranging from actors, filmmakers, dancers, or simply those passionate about performing arts will have their moment in the spotlight through the Long Beach Playhouse’s returning Collaborative Series.
Every weekend from now through the end of March, the Long Beach Playhouse invites community artists to its stage to perform works reiterated, returning with a twist or premiering to the world.
This year’s Collaborative Series tackles difficult conversations, beloved traditions, current political topics and zany performances, offering something utterly unique every week.
January has already touted shows featuring famous puppets and dramatic Craigslist post readings. February’s performances will soon take the stage with the fifth anniversary of The CRayProject’s widely celebrated urban burlesque show, “PINS: The Royal Renaissance,” and an intimate portrayal of hope persevering for a Black family living through grief and fear in “Nina and Troyboy.”
March’s shows will speak to audiences through conversations about the meaning of womanhood throughout the decades in “Generation XYZ,” as well as feature singing performances and an unscripted murder mystery.
“The Collaborative Series gives us the chance for outside artists and smaller organizations who maybe don’t have their own space to come in and use ours,” said Madison Mooney, executive director of the Long Beach Playhouse, adding that participants don’t pay any upfront costs to put on their shows at the Playhouse.
Actors, volunteers and long-time patrons of Long Beach Playhouse will also host shows throughout the next couple of months in the annual “LBP Staff and Friends Cabaret Fundraiser” and the Playhouse’s often eccentric, always entertaining “Plays in a Day.”
The Collaborative Series culminates on March 29 and 30 with all new productions based on scripts from emerging playwrights in the 2024 “New Works Festival.”
Sexual Empowerment, Personal Liberation
On Feb. 9 and 10, the diverse, empowering fifth annual PINS burlesque show will come back to where it first premiered to the world in 2019. This year’s iteration will act as a celebration of PINS itself, with a more intimate cast of 10 dancers, many of whom performed in past years, putting on a royal and regal sexually empowering show.
As with previous PINS (Pretty in Nubian Skin) shows, the cast will be mostly made up of Black and brown dancers with all body types displaying their unique beauties. Dancers trained in ballet, jazz, west African and modern dancing will perform an interactive urban burlesque show.
“I wanted to create a burlesque Black show that was more so telling the history of adoration for Black bodies and what that looks like in the times of social injustice, and how we can now feel liberated with our bodies,” said Chatiera Ray, co-founder of The CRayProject.
Every year, PINS has focused on a certain time in history, whether it’s portraying figures in Black history or experiences that exploited Black people and their bodies. This year, the show is centered on “connecting the European and African diaspora of the evolution of sexual revolution.”
Ray said she wants the audience to leave the show feeling “liberated in owning who they are” and confident to share it with others. The CRayProject will be hosting pop-up events leading up to “PINS: The Royal Renaissance” and will be giving away tickets to the show every week on its social media channels.
“PINS: The Royal Renaissance” will show at the Long Beach Playhouse from Feb. 9 through 11. Tickets can be purchased online at lbplayhouse.org/event/pins-the-royal-renaissance/.
Hope Outlasting Tragedy
Maisha Azadi, co-founder and artistic director for the production company Sparrow and Finch Film, was months away from premiering her play “Nina and Troyboy” to the world when the pandemic hit.
Production halted, and she sat on her deeply personal story following a mother and son through the fears and grief of raising a Black man in America within the constant midst of police violence. Azadi pivoted and turned the story into a film adaptation, and her written and directed feature “Home Soon” has garnered awards and from festivals for Best Actress and Best Emancipatory Film.
The film also received nominations for Best Short, Best Female Director and Outstanding Performance. “Home Soon” was picked up and distributed by the streaming platform Aspire TV.
Azadi said the film has “already been a dream of mine coming true,” and is now releasing the production the way it was originally intended, on a stage in front of a live audience at the Long Beach Playhouse from Feb. 23 through 25.
The story is based on Azadi’s experiences raising her son, as well as the many mothers who lost their children to police violence and used the circumstances to relay messages of hope, faith and perseverance.
“The story, thinking about the mother, I wrote it in protest of what I felt is this growing public desensitization of witnessing these repeated events without the integrity of justice being served.”
Maisha Azadi
Azadi, while raising her son in New York through the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice from 2012 to 2014, said she felt there was a “depth and weight” to their mother’s pain that couldn’t be fully acknowledged through news segments.
“The story, thinking about the mother, I wrote it in protest of what I felt is this growing public desensitization of witnessing these repeated events without the integrity of justice being served,” Azadi said. “And knowing that a lot of times mothers and caretakers can capture that, almost with a dissonance because you have to be able to be focused on what’s good and you can’t really take in all of the negative, but you’re also holding tension at the same time and fear and all of those emotions can be an unspoken experience for many in the community.”
Azadi said she realized after moving to Long Beach that she was holding in feelings of unprocessed grief, and wanted to give her son “a sense of understanding of the world he’s going out to” without the fear of that world.
“Nina and Troyboy,” while dealing with heavy subject matter, has a message of hope persisting even in the midst of the worst circumstances. In an unintended coincidence, the shows fall on Elijah McClain’s birthday on Feb. 25 and just before the anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death on Feb. 26.
“Nina and Troyboy” will show at the Long Beach Playhouse from Feb. 23 through 25. Audiences can attend a discussion and talk-back event following the Feb. 25 show. Tickets can be purchased online at lbplayhouse.org/event/nina-and-troyboy/.
A Never-Ending Discussion
Three former Cal State Long Beach theater students approached their fellow classmates in 2017, desperate to process their feelings about the emerging MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward about their experiences with sexual assault.
They asked questions such as “Where did you learn about womanhood?” and “What does womanhood mean to you?” The answers to those questions formed their play “Generation XYZ.”
Carolina Xique, Vic Melkonyan and Jesse Bosworth are bringing their production back to open up that conversation once again, through their production company (Un)defined Arts Collective.
Xique said about half the play now includes updated material, as they went through a similar exercise with the show’s cast and invited them to insert their own thoughts, beliefs and experiences around womanhood.
“We saw a need to reproduce it with the recent changes to legislation and access to healthcare for women and LGBTQ folks,” Xique said.
“That’s the beauty of the piece, it changes with the times and it’s at the forefront of national politics,” Melkonyan added.
“Generation XYZ” will follow the same multigenerational timeline to tell its story, beginning in the 1980s, jumping to the early 2000s and concluding in the 2020s. The audience will follow the point of view of a mother and daughter, giving two sides of each complex emotion.
“Something that keeps coming up in convos as we form the piece, the lesson I’m getting from it is empathizing with the journey of your mother and your mother’s mother and so on,” Xique said. “There’s a balance of understanding where we all come from and expecting that from our future generations.”
“Generation XYZ” will have shows at the Playhouse from March 15 through 17. Tickets can be purchased online at lbplayhouse.org/event/generation-xyz/.
View the full schedule of the Long Beach Playhouse’s Collaborate Series at lbplayhouse.org/events/.
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