Playwright Lab Plans Workshop Production of Minter Play
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — A staged reading workshop production of "The Orion" by Tom Minter by the Berkshire Playwrights Lab will be held Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center at 14 Castle St.The lab's co-artistic director Joe Cacaci will direct the reading. Admission is free but to reserve tickets, call 413-528-2544 or the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office at 413-528-0100.
In "The Orion," a widowed mother wishes her son would live in the past; the son strives to make his mark as an actor in the opportunities of the present; and a corporate young woman pins her future to an ambitious TV series and a reach over her boss.
With this, three strands of black America jostle to balance legacy and achievement against the inconsistencies and perceptions of success, challenging all of us, according to the playwright, "to recognize how we each must choose our own way in life."
Born in New York and raised in Philadelphia, Tom Minter studied playwriting at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. In 1991, he moved to London, where his writing was initially nurtured by The New Playwright's Trust, and subsequently performed in London and Berlin. He moved back to the United States in 2000, and began work on what emerged as a triptych of plays: "... In Caliban's Eye." Completed in 2004, each "panel" ["The Orion," "Breathing Ash" and "America Rex"] weaves an investigation of American culture, through issues of race, politics, media and religion, and is presented in narrative mediums.
Cacaci just completed principal photography in New Orleans for a National Lampoon feature film, "Snatched." This fall, he will direct the world premiere of the play "Against the Rising Sea," which Berkshire Playwrights Lab developed last season, featuring Elizabeth Franz at New York’s Queens Theatre in the Park.
His own plays have been produced at The Public Theater, The Coconut Grove Theatre (where he also directed), The Long Wharf Theater, and at The Alley Theatre in Houston. He teaches television writing in the graduate program of the Film School at Columbia University.
