"Beast Thing" - CANCELLED

Aleshea Harris has written an extraordinary play-in-progress that explores vital questions about the legacies of violence that formed the United States and continue to ghost its contemporary epoch. As the artistic and production team moved through the creative process, the material provoked extensive and necessary internal conversations. Students in the cast expressed a desire not to move forward with the project and we have decided to cancel the scheduled performances. The Theatre Department looks forward to ensuing conversations on this experience, the play, and the process of artistic collaboration.

 

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The Williams Theatre Department is proud to present Obie-winning playwright Aleshea Harris’s Beast Thing. Beast Thing is the story of a ghost town. In this darkly comedic play, directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, the town Saint is charged with “eating” the town’s sins. The townsfolk believe they can rid themselves of all their ugliness. In reality, they are emaciated by their own secrets. The animals are dying mysteriously, the dogs are barking incessantly, and underneath it all there’s a lurking frustration that we’ve heard this story before.

The play deals with abjection and settler violence. More specifically, there are representations of gun violence, self-harm, nooses and hanging, animal cruelty, silhouetted nudity/sex acts, and infant death.

This production also includes haze, strobe lights, and gunshots.

Please join the performers for a post-performance reception on Friday, November 2nd!

Aleshea Harris received an MFA in Writing for Performance from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been presented a number of places including Soho Rep., the Costume Shop at American Conservatory Theater, Playfest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Skirball Center, and REDCAT. She is the winner of a 2017 Obie Award and the 2016 Relentless Award for her play, Is God Is, which was also a finalist for the 2017 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and seventh on The Kilroys List of “the most recommended un-and underproduced plays by trans and female authors of color”. Aleshea’s piece, What to Send Up When It Goes Down, a play-pageant-ritual response to anti-blackness, will receive an NYC premiere with The Movement Theater Company in the Fall of 2018.

Shayok Misha Chowdhury is a queer Bengali director, writer and performance-maker. He is currently a Resident Artist at Ars Nova, a member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, a Resident Director at The Flea, and a recent New York Theatre Workshop Directing Fellow. His work has also been developed at SPACE on Ryder Farm, HERE Arts Center, NYMF, Vineyard Arts Project, and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Misha is also a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Williams College Department of Theatre, where he recently directed Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves and will be directing Aleshea Harris’ Beast Thing this fall. Other upcoming collaborations include Virginia Grise’s rasgos asiaticos (Soho Rep and CalArts Center for New Performance) and MukhAgni (Ars Nova), co-created with Kameron Neal and developed in part at Williams. A recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, Kundiman, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Workcenter, Misha’s poetry has been published in The Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in Directing from Columbia.