Beyond the Bookshelf… and onto the Stage

WORDS AND STORIES ARE POWERFUL. They shape our thoughts. They inspire us to take action. Beyond the page, plays bring words to life. Audiences enter new worlds and perspectives and travel to new destinations between the open and close of velvet curtains.

Fallow, by American award-winning playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lin, is a play that is deeply personal, springing from the writer’s reflections of his past. Receiving its world premiere production at People’s Light & Theatre in Malvern, it reveals parallel journeys of present and past, of mother and son, which unfold throughout the play. Fallow explores expectations, the intersections and schisms of personal values and family’s, tests of the bonds of love and the struggles of becoming true to one’s self.

The Road Not Taken

On February 4, 2012, 4:30 p.m., People’s Light & Theatre presents a free panel discussion between afternoon and evening performances of Fallow. Expanding the play’s theme of exchanging the beaten path for the road not taken, four invited panelists discuss life journeys that took them away from family’s or society’s expectations or led them to devote significant time and resources to work toward a purpose other than financial compensation in an established profession.

Panelists include:

• Michaelanne Harriman, a visual artist directing community arts at the Ayuda Center in Philadelphia. Michaelanne realized the importance of art as social media and the power of community members creating artwork together the first time she created an outdoor mural in Philadelphia with people who passed by the building.
• Carol Metzker, a writer whose encounter with an 11-year-old girl rescued from slavery led to a journey into the dark world of human trafficking and slavery, and a quest to aid survivors.

Fallow

by Kenneth Lin
Directed by Jackson Gay

January 11 – February 5, 2012

Steinbright Stage at People’s Light & Theatre

Upon discovering a cache of unsent letters, Elizabeth Hayes travels to California on a quest to understand her son Aaron’s murder. An introspective Ivy Leaguer, Aaron took a summer job as a beekeeper, joining the nearly invisible underclass of migrant workers traveling across America. As he became engrossed in tending his hive, the ties to his own family and former identity quickly began to fade. The play asks what holds us to the families we are born into and how we seek and create new families of our own. Recommended for ages 16 and up. Tickets or information: 610-644-3500 or www.peopleslight.org.