The Genesis Plays

THE IN[HEIR]ITANCE PROJECT BRINGS FIVE GENESIS PLAYS TO THE 14TH STREET Y Five Plays. Three Years. One Book.

THE IN[HEIR]ITANCE PROJECT and THE THEATER AT THE 14TH STREET Y are presenting THE GENESIS PLAYS, created in a collaborative process led by Jon Adam Ross and directed by Chantal Pavageaux.

Each GENESIS PLAY is inspired by the narrative of a matriarch or patriarch from the book of Genesis and devised with communities in a different city. THE ABRAHAM PLAY (Twin Cities 2015) follows a Wall Street stock jock searching for a lost deed in a scavenger hunt where the audience holds the clues. In THE REBECCA PLAY (Charleston 2016), the city becomes a mother playing favorites among her children, White and Black. THE JACOB PLAY (Austin 2016) is a hard-hitting, smackdown, knockout wrestling extravaganza! THE LEAH/RACHEL PLAY (Seattle 2017) investigates sisterhood using filmed interviews of sisters of all ages, live music, and ancient papyrus. And in THE SARAH PLAY (Kansas City 2017), three actors struggle with how to tell a sacred shared narrative of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish traditions, when there are multiple accounts of the truth.
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Over the past three years, The In[heir]itance Project devised THE GENESIS PLAYS by entrenching themselves in five mid-sized US cities and opening up the creative process so those communities could participate and develop a deeper connection to the performance and the biblical narratives that inspire the project. The process includes text study with artists and clergy, devising workshops, open rehearsals with participating organizations and houses of worship, performance talkbacks, and community engagement events where local artists and audiences also respond to the source material.

​THE GENESIS PLAYS, a collection of plays inspired by stories in the book of Genesis, will perform in rep during a three-week limited engagement at The Theater at the 14th Street Y (344 E 14th St at 1st Ave, New York, NY 10003) and are funded with generous support by The Covenant Foundation. Performances begin Tuesday, May 1st and continue through Friday, May 18, 2018.  Tickets are $18 (or see three plays for $14 each with a Flex Pass) and are now available online at www.14streety.org 

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