2023 NEXT! Staged Reading Series: Dirt

Synopsis: In a farmhouse on what’s left of a once-great farm estate in Northern Virginia, USA, a family has just lost their mother, who succumbed to dementia and old age. She was white. Her natural son from another marriage, who is also white, is has been the caretaker for her and her husband, who is Black, for years. Their other son, his from a previous marriage long ago, is Black. The forces pulling on the unraveling family’s members defy stereotype and cliché as they alternately battle and plead with each other to shape the future of the family – or are they repeating an entire country’s doomed past? By turns funny, tragic, poetic, unhinged, disarming, and armed – not entirely unlike the South of today – Dirt leaves the audience with many new questions, and plenty to consider about brotherhood… maybe even in a whole new way.

The NEXT! play-reading series continues its mission to celebrate and inspire Central New York playwrights, as well as to introduce their work to a larger audience. Giving playwrights the ability to collaborate with local directors and performers, this series also welcomes the valuable feedback from the public which is critical to the development of any new work. Three plays  are selected each year on the basis of their literary and artistic merit, and are presented free to the public.

Presented in the Fenimore Auditorium. Admission is free by donation. For more information, please call Mike Tamburrino at (607) 547-1453.