In Development: Collaboration with Roger Q. Mason
Acclaimed playwright Roger Q. Mason and Co-Artistic Director Amanda McRaven team up for World Premiere Devised Work.
STORY:
As Coeurage makes it way into a new world, we must reimagine how we make live work. This means that we are shifting much of our focus to produce stories that speak to our time, to our city, and to the communities that surround us. We will create work that uplifts the voices of writers who have not had their voices heard often enough on our stages. It doesn’t mean you’ll never see us do Shakespeare again, but it might mean we do Shakespeare in collaboration with LA-based playwrights, musicians, devisers and makers. We are embracing "a brave new world that has such people in it"!
When we are back in space together in a post-Covid world, it also means reimagining where we will physically be telling our stories. Though you will always be able to see our work on theater stages, we are expanding our reach to produce more devised, site-specific, and experiential work. To that end, we’ve commissioned a very exciting new project with playwright/performer Roger Q. Mason. Though Roger has written for The NOMAD Project, this will be their first full-length piece with us. We could not be more thrilled to support this amazing talent and create a story together.
We’ll spend the next year in the studio exploring and playing (safely) with Roger to create a piece that in their words, "explores the individual and collective effects of our current health care system and our relationship to wellness.” With an ensemble of five, led by new Co-Artistic Director Amanda McRaven—who has a long history of leading ensemble creation with a social justice mission—Coeurage will build a piece with actors’ lived experiences. Guided by the voice of Roger, who has long battled food addiction, pre-diabetes and obesity syndrome, the work will "build a portrait of the ways in which we are drawn, through contemporary medicine, towards unhealthful dependence rather than intrinsic self-awareness.”
Far from agit-prop, issue-based drama, the work will be a vibrant story of our time with Roger’s signature theatricality and McRaven’s attention to physical storytelling. It’s a partnership we are very excited about. We will debut the piece in 2022 and you’ll be able to follow along on the journey of putting it together on our website.
More on Roger below:
Roger Q. Mason (he/they) is an award-winning writer, performer, podcast host, and educator. Mason's writing has played on Broadway (Circle in the Square Reading Series); Off/Off-Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, New Group, The Fire This Time Festival, American Theatre of Actors, Flea Theatre, and Access Theater; and regionally at McCarter Theatre, Victory Gardens, Chicago Dramatists, EST/LA, and Skylight Theatre. He/they've been honored by the Kilroys List, the Fire This Time Alumni Spotlight, and Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award. Mason co-hosts Sister Roger's Gayborhood, a podcast about queer life, work, and the worlds in between. He/they hold degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University.
