Prime Time
by Nuria Casado-Guel
directed by Daniel Gidron

Gloria Aran (Annette Miller) is the star of a soap opera that has been on TV for 40 years. Asked to the Producer’s (Lee Mikeska Gardner) office, she anticipates that they want to describe and pay tribute to her next season, but what they plan for the series is to remove its lead via sudden death because the audience curve reflects a continued decline in audience age.

When the term “ageism” was coined in 1969, many problems of exclusion seemed resolved by government programs like Social Security and Medicare. These days, as people live longer lives, ageism is as insidious and prevalent as the other social “isms.” Age-related shaming takes many forms – the shove in the street, the cold shoulder at the party, the deaf ear at the meeting, the assumption of withered passion — and if you are a woman and already fighting sexism and external beauty battles – not only the discrimination but the “not-seeing” of you is overt. Building on the love story between two 68 year-olds in The Midvale High School 50th Reunion, in Prime Time, The Nora delivers a heroine who will not “die” without a fight.

Tickets for Prime Time are free. However we suggest making advance reservations since our readings often fill up.

Reserve your tickets online.

This rehearsed reading is part of the Nora Theatre Company‘s That’s What She Said: A Feminine Perspective series.

Michael Ricca
In
Moving On
with Ron Roy, on piano

December 5 – 9, 2017
Tickets: $20

Singer Michael Ricca will present his musical one-man show Moving On, an evening of songs about letting go, making change and finding our way forward.

Featuring music from many styles and traditions, Moving On will explore the idea that movement and progress are not always visible to the naked eye, but are more often found in moments, that when you add them up, amount to change, growth and something new.

Joined by acclaimed accompanist, Ron Roy, Moving On looks at the many ways we navigate life’s transitions and includes an eclectic mix of songs – from Simon to Sondheim and many more.

Moving On is being presented with the generous support of a grant from the Bob Jolly Charitable Trust, which was established by the late Boston actor Bob Jolly to support local theater artists.

About the Artist
Michael Ricca has performed in jazz and cabaret rooms, theatres and venues throughout New England, Chicago and New York, most recently in several performances at the Metropolitan Room.  He’s headlined at several New York area venues, including Arci’s Place and Danny’s Skylight Room.  In 2014, he made his seventh sold out appearance at Scullers Jazz Club in the show, Still That Boy.  For many years, he performed with the local jazz vocal group At the Movies. Their CD, Reel One, was released in 2003. The group received the IRNE award for best cabaret performance in 2004. Also an actor, Mr. Ricca is a founding member of Titanic Theatre Company.

It’s About Time
December 6 – 10, 2017
Central Square Theater Studio

Shepley Metcalf
with Ron Roy, Piano/Musical Director

A musical journey through the arc of life. Lauded by The Boston Globe as a “superb cabaret/jazz singer and her ace piano accompanist,” Shepley Metcalf and Ron Roy offer up songs about life’s chapters, from the earliest years to the last. Teen angst, romance, friendship, work life, parenthood, and mortality are touched upon in this poignant, witty collection of tunes by such greats as Jacques Brel, Carole King, Johnny Mercer, Laura Nyro, and Stephen Sondheim.

Since 2008 the duo have released three albums and performed around New England (Scullers Jazz Club, Wellfleet Preservation Hall, Lily Pad), New York City (Metropolitan Room) and Chicago (Davenport’s Piano Bar & Cabaret). Metcalf sang in the cabaret duo Cabaret Enchante in the 1990s, and Roy, who has extensive credits in cabaret and musical theatre, is a faculty member at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Special Benefit Staged Reading of

Building the Wall

by Robert Shenkkan
directed by Benny Sato Ambush
featuring Steve Barkhimer & Patrice Jean-Baptiste
October 16, 2017 at 7pm
All Tickets $25

Buy Tickets Online

Two years from now, that policy has resulted in the mass round-up of millions of undocumented immigrants, with their incarceration overflowing into private prisons and camps reminiscent of another century. The former warden for one facility is awaiting sentencing for what happened under his watch. In a riveting interview with an historian who has come seeking the truth, he gradually reveals how the unthinkable became the inevitable, and the faceless illegals under his charge became the face of tragedy. A harrowing drama from Pulitzer Prize Winner Robert Schenkkan (All the Way, The Kentucky Cycle) imagining the consequences of President Trump’s anti-immigration campaign rhetoric if turned into federal policy.

After the reading, please join us for a panel discussion featuring Mojdeh Rohani, Executive Director, Community Legal Services and Counseling Center; Denzil Mohammed, Director, Public Education Institute, Immigrant Learning Center, and Judy Hikes,  from the Friends of the Cambridge Community Learning Center. Respondents will include members of our local immigrant communities.

Proceeds from the reading will benefit Central Square Theater, Friends of the Community Learning Center, Community Legal Services and Counseling Center, and the Immigrant Learning Center.

A very special thanks to Diane Portnoy, Founder and CEO of The Immigrant Learning Center, Inc., for her generous support in underwriting this reading of Building The Wall.

Youth Underground presents
Here and There A Staged Reading

written by Ginger Lazarus
directed by Vincent Ernest Siders
staged Managed by Kira Patterson

Wednesday, August 9 at 7pm
Central Square Theater

Each season, Youth Underground creates a new piece of Investigative Theater. This year’s theme is the Immigration.

Come hear a reading of the work in progress.

This is a free event but you are encouraged to RSVP online, or by emailing Kortney at kaa@centralsquaretheater.org