Blind Runner
written & directed by Amir Reza Koohestani
A Mehr Theatre Group production | Part of Under the Radar Festival | In partnership with St. Ann's Warehouse
Once a week, a husband comes to visit his captive wife who has been detained as a political prisoner in Tehran. Spied on by cameras and microphones, their conversations become increasingly distant, inhibiting their ability to share their daily lives. At his wife’s insistence, the husband agrees to train and guide a young blind woman through a Parisian footrace. As they come to learn more about each other, the unlikely couple grows close and finds a common rhythm. At the race’s end, they set upon a second challenge: can they run the Channel Tunnel to England, covering 38 kilometers in a few hours and avoiding being hit by the first train of the morning?
The Ford/Hill Project
created by Elizabeth Marvel & Lee Sunday Evans, who also directs
presented by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company & The Public Theater Company
30 years apart, Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford provoked a reckoning about who is given the power to shape the future of our country by telling the story of one of the most private moments of their lives in one of the most public settings imaginable. With an ensemble of four actors speaking from the verbatim transcripts of these pivotal hearings, these two women’s stories can be seen side by side in a new light in Waterwell’s illuminating new production which we are honored to bring to two of the country's most prestigious theaters in the weeks leading up to the consequential 2024 election.
A Good Day to Me Not to You
written & performed by Lameece Issaq
directed by Lee Sunday Evans
presented through special arrangement with Plate Spinner Productions
Writer and actor Lameece Issaq teams up with two-time Obie winning director Lee Sunday Evans on her riotously funny and gut-wrenching new play about a 40-whatever dental lab tech who gets fired and moves into St. Agnes Residence, a woman's rooming house run by nuns. While there, she must come to terms with her unfulfilled path to motherhood and the untimely death of her sister - all while fending off her unpredictable and sometimes deranged cohabitants. The play is performed by Issaq in a story-telling tour-de-force.
Refugees + Resettlement in the United States
Waterwell was commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations to create an original, site-specific project about global migration to be performed in their historic building. Waterwell created an experiential performance project that highlighted key policy questions about how gender-based asylum law currently impacts the overseas refugee vetting process, and highlighted WelcomeCorps, a new State Department program that is revolutionizing the way that refugees can be identified and resettled in the U.S.
Do Not Tell Them I Am a Prince
Short play written by: Edafe Okporo
In Nigeria, a gay man named Edafe finds himself trapped in the suffocating grip of violent persecution and makes the painful decision to flee his homeland. He arrives at JFK airport hoping to find refuge, but ends up confined within the walls of an ICE detention center. Struggling to reconcile his shattered expectations, Edafe's story is a poignant exploration of the harrowing realities of U.S. immigration detention.
The Courtroom: a re-enactment of one woman’s deportation proceedings
An intimate encounter with our nation’s immigration court system, The Courtroom tells the story of Elizabeth Keathley, an immigrant from the Philippines who married a U.S. Citizen and came to this country in 2004 on a K3 Visa. After inadvertently registering to vote at the DMV in Bloomington, IL, receiving a voter registration card in the mail, and voting, her removal proceedings were set in motion. Her case began in Immigration Court and was eventually heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. The Courtroom is performed entirely verbatim from court transcripts.
Sé Lo Que es Pandemia / I Know What Pandemic Means
Steaming now at pandemia.nyc
This 15-minute, bilingual documentary by Frisly Soberanis is an intimate piece about the impact of Covid-19 on undocumented Latin American communities in Queens at the height of the pandemic.
