Cherry Picked
A New Play Reading Series on Fire Island
180 Bayview Walk, Cherry Grove, NY, 11782
Presented by Arts Project of Cherry Grove and Cherry Grove Pizza
In Partnership with National Queer Theater and The Other Side of Silence
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Readings will take place July 7th-August 25th at The Cherry Grove Community House & Theater in Cherry Grove, Fire Island. All readings start at 8:00pm. Show your reservation for that night's play and get 10% off at Cherry Grove Pizza.
THE PLAYS
July 7th at 8pm: THE CODEX OF NARMA by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson
Directed by Raz Golden
Featuring: Ianne Fields Stewart, Kalonjee Gallimore, Naomi Lorrain, and Kai Davis
The Codex of Narma is a queer story about the fluidity of gender, ambition, attraction, and reconciliation. Set in the near future after the second US Civil War, data scientist and aspiring entrepreneur Narma X has been hired to teach Black history accurately to Dhalgren Higgs by his mother Hyacynth, despite being illegal in the Free States of the southeast.
July 14th at 6pm: NIGHT CITIES by Roger Q. Mason
Directed by Karl Hawkins
Featuring: J. Harrison Ghee, Kalonjee Gallimore, Ashton Muñiz, Kamal Sehrawy, and Geoff Hill.
A young Bayard Rustin—before Civil Rights Movement fame—must choose between his private desires as a queer black man and his public calling as an agent of social justice and civic change. Set against the vibrant labor movement of the 1930s and 40s, this piece embraces the musicality, dream imagery, and liberation of jazz playwriting to explore one man's quest for complex humanity in a world that limits who we are to how we can be used for the good of others.
July 21st at 8pm: OCEAN WALK by Gianfranco Lentini
Directed by Marc Acito
Featuring: Lou Liberatore, Hero Marguirite, and Sam Gravitte.
Fire Island is underwater. A cataclysmic storm finally breached the last of the island’s defenses. All residents have evacuated…except one: Harry, a longtime resident of the Pines, refuses to leave his submerged home even when Casey, a 17-year-old Senior Deckhand of the Sayville Ferry Service, shows up to fish him out.
August 4th at 8pm: WACO BOY CLUB by Mack Lawrence
Directed by Logan Gabrielle Schulman
Featuring: Sagan Chen, Max Raymond, Ema Zivkovic, and Shane Diamond
In a garage in Waco, TX, three friends tete-a-tete with ghosts, gender, and guilty pleasures. Over ouija board confessionals and chicken salad sandwiches, Waco Boy Club follows the looping and longing dialogues of Strider, Cosmo, and Phantom. The sturdiness of their relationships comes into question when gender ideation, sexual desire, 90s country music, and too much beer meet, but they can definitely agree on this: the best chicken salad does not have raisins.
August 18th at 8pm: THIS IS A FACE by J.C. Pankratz
Directed by Dominique Rider
Featuring: Rad Pereira, Reed Northrup, and Clew
B’s work as a potter trying to sculpt the perfect clay egg is interrupted when their partner, K, asks for a vitally important creation: a new face. Attempting the impossible will redefine what it means to see and be seen for both of them in this chimerical t4t love story.
August 25th at 8pm: ENDERS GAY by Salwa Meghjee
Directed by Zahra Budhwani
Featuring: Amaal Saifudeen, Anahita Monfared, Jake Regensberg, and Alejandro Varela
Laiba is a queer teenage Muslim girl who is obsessed with proving that Ender from the 1985 sci-fi novel Ender's Game is gay, despite the author Orson Scott Card’s documented homophobia. She comes to believe she is Ender and must fall in gay love with her classmate Jannat to save the world. She is also told by her teacher Mr./Colonel Pratt to kill all the birds, who are the buggers, except they're also gay, and they talk to her and want her to be their queen, but they’re also maybe in cahoots with Orson Scott Card, and by the way, the end of the world is tomorrow.
Learn more about the other readings this summer presented by The Other Side of Silence at artsprojectcg.org.
About Arts Project of Cherry Grove
Fire Island is a narrow, 31-mile-long barrier island off the coast of Long Island. Since the 1920s, Cherry Grove has attracted artistic, bohemian vacationers from New York City and its surrounding areas, naturally evolving into one of the nation’s foremost LGBTQ summertime destinations.
The Arts Project of Cherry Grove was incorporated in 1948. Its first production was a fundraising event, the Cherry Grove Follies of 1948. Ever since then, the Arts Project has played a central role in the community life of Cherry Grove.
In 2013 The Community House was nominated for inclusion in the New York State Parks and National Registers for Historic Places. Cherry Grove resident, Carl Luss, researched and wrote the extensive nomination papers which ultimately resulted in its official designation on June 4, 2013. The Community House is one of three places designated for their seminal importance in LGBTQ history. (The others are The Stonewall Inn in New York City and the Frank Kameny home in Washington, D.C.)
The Arts Project of Cherry Grove and its home, the Community House, are proud to be considered instrumental in the history of the LGBTQ movement. We invite you to become active participants in this ever-evolving legacy.