Lockdown
Live Broadcast Recording December 3 at 7PM ET | Rebroadcasts of recording from 12/4 at 10am ET to 12/7 at 6pm ET by WP’s Mellon Playwright In Residence, Cori Thomas
directed by Kent Gash
with Lillian Andrea De León, Reynaldo Piniella,Travis Raeburn, Heather Alicia Simms, Keith Randolph Smith
in partnership with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
“Lockdown is capaciously compassionate, with excellent performances. A rare night at the theater, and a valuable one.” – The New York Times
“Directed with nuance and empathy by Kent Gash for the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Cori Thomas’s beautifully structured play is a resonant demonstration of the inseparability of the personal from the political. Thomas has a great ear for prison folkways without ever seeming sociological about it.” – The New Yorker
Inspired by her conversations with people serving life sentences at San Quentin Prison, the reading of this searing and beautiful play by Cori Thomas (When January Feels Like Summer) will reunite the cast and director of the acclaimed Rattlestick Playwrights Theater production. Lockdown is an authentic, intimate, and powerful examination of what life in prison is really like, and an exploration of the possibilities for transformation through human connection.
For more information about Rattlestick and their work, go to rattlestick.org/.
PANEL: A conversation responding to LOCKDOWN
Friday, December 4 at 4PM ET
Join playwright Cori Thomas and two incredible social justice activists and writers James King and Robbie Pollock for a discussion about Lockdown and its resonance for those with lived experience with incarceration and the criminal justice system.
Additional Events:
WP Theater and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater are partnering with the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought (CCCCT) on events surrounding Lockdown, including the CCCCT’s Abolition 13/13 project, featuring blog posts written by men at San Quentin who have participated in the writing and research of Lockdown.
The mission of CCCCT is to nourish the critical examination of our present and to achieve a critical praxis for our future. The CCCCT is the home of the Initiative for a Just Society (IJS), and it is a joint project of the Columbia Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Columbia Law School. Professor Bernard E. Harcourt, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, founded the CCCCT in 2014.
Lillian Andrea De Leon
(Voicing STAGE DIRECTIONS, she/her/hers) A singer, actor, and songwriter, Lillian is a New York City based artist from Texas. Pre Covid, she has done many regional productions in North Texas including Liesl Tommy’s reimagined Les Miserables at Dallas Theater Center. In the city she is best known for being a cabaret regular in venues such as Feinstein’s 54 Below, Laurie Beechman Theatre, City Winery, Green Room 42 and more. She has also done many new readings and singing appearances in this new era of online and virtual performances. One being her first solo show that has been nominated for Best Live Streamed Concert of BroadwayWorld’s Cabaret Awards 2020.
Heather Alicia Simms
(ERNIE, she/hers) Broadway credits include Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, A Raisin in the Sun, and Gem of the Ocean. Other credits include By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine, Fairview, Barbecue, Born Bad, The Exonerated and Insurrection: Holding History. Her film credits include Red Hook Summer, The Nanny Diaries, Broken Flowers, and the upcoming Roxanne, Roxanne. Her television credits include Law and Order, Whoopi, and The Good Wife. She received an Audie award for her work on the audiobook Upstate, and the prestigious TCG/Fox Foundation Fellowship.
Genevieve Ortiz
(STAGE MANAGER, she/her/hers): Recent credits include WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT GOES DOWN East Coast Tour (Wooly Mammoth Theatre Company; A.R.T. Cambridge; The Public Theater); PUBLIC WORKS’ HERCULES (The Public Theater); LOCKDOWN (Rattlestick Theater); RECENT ALIEN ABDUCTIONS (The Play Company); WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT GOES DOWN (The Movement Theatre Company); THE REVOLVING CYCLES TRULY AND STEADILY ROLL’D (The Playwright’s Realm); IS GOD IS (Soho Rep); THE CHRISTIANS (Baltimore Center Stage).
Keith Randolph Smith
(WISE, he/him/his) Lockdown (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater). Broadway: Jitney, American Psycho, Fences, Come Back Little Sheba, King Hedley II, Salome, Piano Lesson. Off-Broadway: Paradise Blue, First Breeze of Summer, Intimacy, Tamburlaine, Fabulation.
Reynaldo Piniella
(CORRECTIONS OFFICER, he/him) is a recipient of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship from TCG, the Thomas Barbour award for Playwriting and a member of the Civilians R&D Group. Off-Broadway credits include work at Signature, TFANA, the Public, Rattlestick, Working Theater and NYTW Next Door. Regional credits include Baltimore Center Stage, Syracuse Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Play House, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, O’Neill and the Sundance Theater Lab. Follow him @ReynaldoRey. www.reynaldopiniella.com
Travis Raeburn
(CLUE, he/him/his) is an actor from New York City and recent graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Acting Conservatory. This past year he has been featured in a national commercial for Master Card, a live Pop tart commercial on Twitter and a live stream run in the Phoenix Theatre’s production of Henry VI part 3 playing Henry VI. He is forever in endless gratitude and debt to his mother and grandmother for their endless love and support. He would like to thank family, friends and predecessors for allowing him to stand on their shoulders. Black lives have and always will matter. His website is www.travisraeburn.com
Cori Thomas
(PLAYWRIGHT, she/her) is an award winning playwright and screenwriter. Produced plays: Lockdown; When January Feels Like Summer; Citizens Market; My Secret Language of Wishes; PA’S Hat and more. Produced and Developed at: WP Theater; Rattlestick Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Page 73, Ensemble Studio Theatre; City Theater Co. Pittsburgh; The Goodman Theater; Pillsbury House Theater; Mixed Blood; Horizon’s Theater, Mosaic Theatre Co.; and others. She has won the American Theater Critics Osborn Award; Edgerton Foundation Prize; Was a 2017 runner up for The Dramatist Guild Horton Foote Playwriting Award; is a two time Theodore Ward Prize winner. Cori is a New Dramatists Resident. She has been awarded Fellowships at O’Neill National Playwrights Conference; Sundance Theater Lab; MacDowell Colony; Bogliasco Foundation; Baryshnikov Arts Center; and more. Film and TV Projects include: Original screenplay for HBO Films and Tribeca Productions; JuVee Productions; and more.. Cori is presently co-writing the memoirs of Sex Trafficking victim Sara Kruzan for Knopf/Random House. Founder: The Pa’s Hat Foundation a 501c(3) in 2012. Pa’s Hat is an organization focused on helping former child soldiers and other marginalized citizens of Liberia, West Africa with educational and work related assistance. Ongoing volunteer at San Quentin State Prison with the anti-violence program No More Tears. Board of Directors: of New Dramatists, Pa’s Hat Foundation, Project FEEL, and No More TearsSQ. Cori is represented by Leah Hamos and Vernalis Co at The Gersh Agency, Kirsten Jacobson at Good-Fear Eve MacSweeney at Fletcher and Co.
Kent Gash
(DIRECTOR, he/him) directed the acclaimed World Premiere of Robert O’Hara’s BARBECUE at the Public Theatre and is the co-author and director of LANGSTON IN HARLEM (2010 Audelco Award-BEST MUSICAL.). New York: New York premiere of MISS EVER’S BOYS and the revival of HOME both for Melting Pot Theatre Co., and Duke Ellington’s BEGGARS HOLIDAY: York. Recent regional: Public Works WINTERS TALE: Dallas Theatre Center, THE WIZ at Ford’s Theatre (10 Best of 2018- Washington Post,13 Helen Hayes nominations), August Wilson’s THE GEM OF THE OCEAN: South Coast Rep, (LA TIMES TEN BEST OF 2017). GOODNIGHT TYLER: Alliance, THE MOUNTAINTOP: Trinity Rep, WIG OUT and CHOIR BOY for Studio Theatre, DC. Classical productions include: TROILIUS and CRESSIDA and TWELFTH NIGHT at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, CORIOLANUS and PRIVATE LIVES at Shakespeare Santa Cruz and THE COMEDY OF ERRORS at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Future productions 2019: GUYS AND DOLLS at the Guthrie. Mr. Gash is the former Associate Artistic Director of both Alabama Shakespeare Festival and the Alliance Theatre; former Artist in Residence Studio Theatre DC and is Founding Director of The New Studio on Broadway at Tisch, NYU. BFA: CMU, MFA: UCLA. For Darius Smith.
