The Neighborhood Play Program is a community play-making program that explores the stories of a neighborhood and collaboratively creates a play with and about the community. The Orpheum Theatre Group facilitates a series of free interactive story-based workshops between neighborhood residents and artists, creates a fictional play inspired by the stories, and invites community members to audition and participate in the production alongside professional Orpheum teaching artists. The program culminates in a free public performance.
COMING SOON
WE ALL WE GOT: A BINGHAMPTON PLAY
FREE PERFORMANCES NOVEMBER 1 - 3, 2024
Conceived by the Orpheum Theatre Group and the Binghampton Community
Written By Ann Perry Wallace
Shavonne is the IT Girl from a Black family that goes back generations. Bakari is a refugee with big dreams and even bigger obstacles. Two girls with starkly different lives, come of age in the same vibrant and unpredictable neighborhood. Inspired by hundreds of real Binghampton stories, this fictional Binghampton introduces a colorful community of characters bringing up their young people and holding onto hope in one of Memphis’ most diverse—and fast-changing—neighborhoods.
Play commissioned and originally produced by the Orpheum Theatre Group, Memphis, Tennessee.
Meet the Playwright
Ann Perry Wallace is the 2023 winner of the Ostrander Award for Outstanding Original Script for her play Live Rich Die Poor, based on the life of Zora Neale Hurston the famed folklorist, anthropologist and Harlem Renaissance writer.
Ann is an actor and writer from Memphis, Tennessee. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre from UT Chattanooga and worked in theatre in Chicago for 15 years. She is a writer of fiction, plays, children’s stories and has just started the torture of writing her first screenplay. She is currently gearing up to tour Live Rich Die Poor, where she plays 18 characters. Besides her own one woman show, Ann was last seen on a Memphis Stage in Tennessee Shakespeare’s To Kill A Mockingbird, also playing multiple roles in Tennessee Shakespeare’s Educational Tour of Romeo and Juliet. She is also a 14 year practitioner, both actor and conductor, of Playback Theatre, founded by drama therapist Jonathon Fox. Ann can also be seen in the independent films 100 Lives, The Romance of Loneliness and The Department of Signs and Magical Intervention. Ann is truly invigorated to work with the Orpheum on the Neighborhood Play Program and once again let her artistic imagination come alive.
Meet Our Partners
In 2023-2024, we are excited to be partnering with the Binghampton neighborhood to create a Binghampton play made in collaboration with the following partner organizations: Refugee Empowerment Program, Carpenter Art Garden, First Baptist Broad Church, Inspire Community Café, Collage Dance Collective, Cornerstone Lester Prep, Binghampton Development Corporation, Lester Community Center and more.
The Neighborhood Play Program is made possible by:
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