AUSTIN: Ground Floor Theatre (GFT) has announced updates to their 2021 season, along with two new titles for the 2022 season.
GFT has scheduled dates for two postponed 2020 productions, including rain falls special on me by Lane Michael Stanley, which will run Aug. 19-Sept. 5. The play follows six characters who come together while trying to find a place to stay dry in the rain in Austin, and will be directed by GFTco-artistic director Patti Neff-Tiven.
“I’m so excited to finally bring rain falls special on me to GFT audiences! This is the longest I have ever been involved with a show in any capacity, and I’ve been able to watch it blossom and change,” Neff-Tiven said in a statement. “I’m thrilled that we will be able to give rain the full production it deserves, as it speaks so much to our present moment and the issues and struggles houseless folks are experiencing.”
The season will continue with the musical Memphis (Dec. 2-19) by Joe DiPietro, with music by David Bryan and lyrics by DiPietro and Bryan. Memphis is the story of Huey Calhoun, loosely based on 1950s radio DJ Dewey Phillips, as he brings blues and soul music to a white Southern audience in the time of segregation. Matrex Kilgore will direct.
Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics, also originally scheduled for the 2020 season, will move to the 2022 season, running Feb. 17-March 5, 2022. This Pulitzer-winning play is set in a Cuban cigar factory in Florida in 1929, where a new lector reads Anna Karenina to the workers. Carl Gonzalez will direct.
The season will conclude with Dot by Colman Domingo, running May 12-28, 2022. Dot follows a woman struggling to hold on to her memory as she and her three grown children celebrate the holidays in their West Philadelphia neighborhood. Lisa B. Thompson will direct.
GFT has also announced their new quarterly artist for GFT In Residence, siri gurudev. Gurudev is a trans multidisciplinary artist and writer from Bogotá, Colombia. Gurudev uses performance as an art form and methodology for research, and is working on their doctorate in performance studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Their work En el nombre del padre, a bilingual performance blessing in four acts, uses poetry, movement, and storytelling to reflect on the ancestral and personal wounds of colonization and patriarchal family dynamics. En el nombre del padre will steam live next month.
GFT’s Trans Lives/Trans Voices, featuring new stories every Thursday, will continue streaming each week until May 20. Technical direction is by Hank Kerston.
Ground Floor Theatre concentrates on works by and for underrepresented communities, and serves as an incubator to foster and grow new groundbreaking works that shine a light on groups that are often overlooked.
