Author | Sophie Sotsky
Community empowerment, storytelling, historical mining and documentary theatre all come together in Frack Theatre’s compelling new play, Village Voices.
Written and directed by Oscar Lopez, this compelling re-telling of our recent history literally gives a voice to real-life individuals living in New York’s West Village circa the time of the Stonewall Riots and the HIV/AIDS epidemic — people of the LGBT community who were, at that time, decisively silenced.
From a homeless trans girl living with HIV, to a 74-year-old bartender at the Stonewall Inn, to a gay Lutheran priest, to a party boy, this colorful cast of character comes to life through Frack Theater’s staunch techniques of verbatim and documentary theatre. Rigorous historiography fuses excitingly with music, song and dance.
Using the 2013 homophobic murder of Mark Carson as a point of departure, Village Voices is scripted from hours of interviews with real-life characters in the West Village. Frack Theatre sheds light on a legacy of tragedy and triumph, and honors a community by giving it a voice.
Set against a backdrop that extends from the AIDS epidemic to the fall of DOMA, Village Voices illuminates both the powerfully personal and the global struggles of these historical events.
Village Voices is heart-breaking, brave, fabulous and insightful.
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Village Voices was written and Directed by Oscar Lopez, and presented by Frack Theatre (Lindsay Lk Morris, Sam Clark and Oscar Lopez.) Village Voices features: Brandon Ferraro, Matthew Cody Lang, Regine Mont-Louis, William Mulligan, and Jennifer Wiper.
Wednesday December 10 and Thursday December 11, 8 pm at Alchemical Theatre Laboratory, 104 W 14th St, New York, NY 10011.
Tickets are $18 at fracktheatre.brownpapertickets.com and at the door (cash only).
@fracktheatre
