This is a Classic: The Expand the Canon Theatre Podcast

Lots to look forward to -- including SPECIAL GUESTS and a DISCOUNT CODE!

Alice Childress' Wedding Band (from our 2020 List!) is being produced at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn this April & May. Use code PigPal65 for discount tickets.

We chat with director Awoye Timpo, who also leads Classix (https://www.theclassix.org/our-vision) about Alice Childress and why she's a classic!

If you want to take on the pandemic, privilege, and systemic racism with grace and heart… then you need to look to Alice Childress. A compassionate yet candid look at the complexities of prejudice, Wedding Band focuses on love and the forces that try to tear it down. The play follows Julia, a Black woman, through the complexities of an interracial relationship in 1918 Charleston, South Carolina. This generous community of Black women navigate an Influenza outbreak, war abroad, and war at home.

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This episode is hosted by Mary Candler and Shannon Corenthin, and the scene is performed by Terra Chaney and Javan Nelson.

If you’re dreaming about a combination of the musical folklore of Hadestown and Oklahoma… Spunk is a theatrical event (with music). An expansion of her well-loved short story (but with a more joyous ending), this play centers on the relationship between a married woman and a loveable wandering musician named Spunk. It is a humorous, moving portrait of a small-town Black community in the 1930s. Filled with music, magic, and folklore, Spunk manages to be epically theatrical whilst remaining grounded and endearingly quotidien. It is a love letter to small towns, the Black communities in the South, and the wanderers and romantics in us all.

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This episode is hosted by Mary Candler and Skye Pagon, and the scene is performed by Shannon Corenthin and Sam Kiley.

If you’re interested in the intersection of art and politics… consider these one-act plays! In Restless Night, two college students debate the virtues of creating art or abandoning it all to become a political activist -– both coming close to understanding each other, though not seeing eye to eye. A Hell of Her Own delves into similar questions: is rebellion more virtuous than being… well, virtuous? Women are at the center of these two beautiful, thoughtful slices of life – and both have the exact same breakdown of actors to make doubling easy.

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This episode is hosted by Emily Lyon and Skye Pagon, and the scene is performed by Dorothea Gloria and Elizabeth Roberts.

If you thought LGBTQ+ culture was invented in the 1960s, think again… Witty, tragic, and vibrant, The Drag is an exquisite portrait of the existing LGBTQ+ community of the 1920s. Mae West crafts an eloquent history lesson mixed with joyful celebration. The Drag shows the perils of “conversion therapy” and the criminalization of homosexuality, while simultaneously presenting in delightful clarity the same joys, losses, warmth, and transgressive counter-culture that our LGBTQ+ family feels to this day.

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This episode is hosted by Skye Pagon and Shannon Corenthin, and the scene is performed by Basil Rodericks and Royston Scott.

If you’re looking to engage a white audience in Black Lives Matter conversations… consider this heartbreaking yet love-filled family portrait. This play was “the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the [white] American people relative to the lamentable condition of the millions of Colored citizens in this free republic,” according to the program for the first production in NYC in 1916. Rachel, a young Black woman in love, wonders if she could endure having kids of her own given the racism she and the children in her neighborhood face everyday. Though certainly a tragedy, this play also shows Black love and Black joy in this historically important piece.

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This episode is hosted by Mary Candler and Shanon Corenthin, and the scene is performed by Jamal James and Samanthia Nixon.

If you put The Seagull, A Doll’s House, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession in a blender… you get this thoughtful dramedy about a woman’s true value. Our charming protagonist, Olga, is a successful painter, a wit, and, it turns out, a victim of sexual assault. Revelations of her past subvert her romantic future and ultimately lead her to end up with a kind man who values her soul rather than her body. Anima (or Her Soul) reminds us of the negative implications of patriarchal norms on both men and women. Step into this quirky, disarming, and award-winning play for an examination of who we’re really seeking.

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This episode is hosted by Emily Lyon and Shanon Corenthin, and Olga's monologue is performed by Madeline Addis.

If you’re thinking of producing The Taming of the Shrew… consider this play, featuring five bold women with strength and agency instead. While Olivia takes on various unattractive qualities to un-suit her various suitors (despite her frustrated father’s attempts to marry her off), Laura and Victoria are wooing each other – yet competing with each other – both in an effort to best Don Carlos. Bold Stroke for a Husband has the levity and hijinks of a Shakespearean comedy with the feminist attitudes of a much more modern piece, combining the best of Shrew and Twelfth Night in one tight, funny, uplifting narrative.

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Episode hosted by Emily Lyon and Mary Candler. Scene performed by Sara Hymes and Greg Phelps.

If you’re looking for a restoration play that tackles the patriarchy (comedically, of course)… you’ve met your match. A star vehicle for a charismatic actor, this 1700's Moliere-esque comedy by Susanna Centlivre deftly ridicules hypocrisy, greed, hubris, and the absurdity of women’s position as property. Anne Lovely has not one but four bizarre male guardians who must give consent to her marriage, and Colonel Fainwell is determined to win each over through the clever use of disguises. With insightful satire, physical comedy, and modern humor, this tight plot keeps an audience in joyful suspense until the final moment.

Skye and Mary walk through this comical plot (#invisibelt), the possible lore of Susanna Centlivre's career, and reasons why this comedy is a classic. Hedgepig Ensemble members Jory Murphy and Andrew Hutcheson perform a scene!

If you wish Twelfth Night’s love triangle was a love octagon… meet this passionate and thrilling comedy. House of Desires is a 1600's romantic farce about two siblings involved in a variety of romantic entanglements. Originally written in Spanish, it is a wonderfully witty comedy of errors full of clear-sighted female protagonists, clever servants, and the folly of ambitious men.

Emily and Shannon unpack Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's fascinating life and the plot of this hilarious play. And Hedgepig Ensemble member Basil Rodericks performs a monologue from Catherine Boyle's translation!