NEWS

 

Barber Theatre, Cunningham Theatre Center, Davidson College
June 17 – July 31, 2022

Tickets can be purchased at this link.

A joint venture between North Carolina A&T State University theatre faculty members and the Davidson College Department of Theatre will bring a  new summer professional theatre to the Davidson campus. The Common Thread Theatre Collective will create bold, exciting theatre that engages with our Lake Norman and wider Charlotte communities in an intentional and provocative way around inclusive stories of contemporary relevance.

“We want to create a strong company of local artists that value professional standards of production and work with us to produce stories that center communities and voices that have traditionally been underrepresented in the American theatre community,” said Karli Henderson, Producer at Davidson College and co-founder of Common Thread Theatre Collective.

For the inaugural season, CTTC is producing two shows in the intimate Barber Theatre on Davidson’s campus in Davidson, NC.  The first production is Violet, a moving, North-Carolina set musical that won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical when it premiered Off-Broadway in 1997.

The second production will be Barbeque by Robert O’Hara, that juxtaposes two family reunions to spark a provocative dialogue about racial and family politics.

Common Thread Theatre Collective is made possible by funding from the Bacca Guest Artist and Scholar Fund, and from the Clark Ross Innovation in Academics Fund. This project was made possible, in part, with funding from the Arts and Science Council, and the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources.

Violet
Music by Jeanine Tesori and Book by Brian Crawley
Directed by Jeremy DeCarlos
Music Direction by Charlene Thomas
June 17 – July 3, 2022

Winner of the Drama Critics’ Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical when it premiered Off-Broadway in 1997, and then nominated for a Tony for its Broadway debut in 2014 in a revised version, Violet is a moving, North-Carolina set musical about one young woman’s healing quest for fulfillment. It features show-stopping anthems ranging from American roots to folk to gospel.  With a score from Tony-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change; Thoroughly Modern Millie; Shrek; Fun Home) and book and lyrics by the acclaimed Brian Crawley (A Little Princess), Violet is inspired by the short story, The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts, astounding critics and audiences alike for more than 25 years. Violet is a powerhouse piece of theatre that needs no more than a few chairs and a company of talented performers to take an audience’s breath away.

Barbecue
By Robert O’Hara
Directed by Donna Bradby
July 14 – 31, 2022

Barbecue centers around the O’Mallerys, a dysfunctional group of siblings who come together for a park barbeque in order to stage an emergency intervention for their sister Barbara, whose drug habit has gotten out of hand.  However, there are in fact two O’Mallery families, one white and one black.  Each appear in different, yet hilariously similar, scenes that juxtapose to create a provocative dialogue about racial and family politics.

ABOUT COMMON THREAD THEATRE COLLECTIVE:

Common Thread Theatre Collective is a joint venture between faculty members at Davidson College and faculty members from North Carolina A&T State University.  While these are two very different institutions, the common thread that binds the faculty and students together is a love of theatre.  We want to tell stories that center marginalized communities in new, fresh ways.  Creating this professional theatre on Davidson’s campus in partnership with NC A&T faculty allows us to work with students, faculty and staff as well as our local, professional theatre artists to create work that is intentional and impactful for our communities. Find out more at the website here.

ABOUT DAVIDSON COLLEGE:

Davidson College is a premier liberal arts college for 1,920 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.

ABOUT NORTH CAROLINA A&T STATE UNIVERSITY:

North Carolina A&T State University is so many things to so many people, both in our state and around the country. We are a top-flight research university, the largest historically black university in the country, the #1 producer of degrees awarded to African Americans in North Carolina and nationally recognized for our excellence in science, technology, mathematics and engineering (STEM) education. We are a diverse community, bound by intense pride and tradition, with fiercely loyal alumni who hold positions of importance and influence in companies and government agencies across the state, the country and the world. We are inclusive and welcoming, with students from many backgrounds and cultures, every part of our state, our nation and countries around the globe. We are achievers, driven by a curious, limitless, fearless spirit that fuels discovery and innovation, resulting in 41 patents issued based on our research, as well as numerous spin-off and start-up companies. Learn more at www.ncat.edu.