Whither Goest Thou America: A Festival of New American Play Readings

April 11-May 12. Undermain presents a series of readings of new plays examining the current American landscape. Each week of the series will focus on a different playwright and play with staged readings by an ensemble cast. Audiences will have the opportunity to return each week of the series to experience a new work examining the American experience and asking the question, “Where are we going?”

Each performance is $15.

April 17-19: Red Chariot by Gordon Dahlquist. A science-fiction thriller set in the middle of the downfall of civilization after the Internet has created a mysterious Tarot Deck, that when read, can actually affect the past, present and future.

April 24-25: Vox Humana by Len Jenkin is a dark comedy of Danny and Suzie Q., who cross paths with Mona, an ex-showgirl, the poet Skintite, Uncle Bud, a carnival barker and the chanteuse Miss Koko.

May 1: so go the ghosts of méxico, part one by Matthew Paul Olmos The first of a three-play cycle exploring the US/México drug wars. Selected by American Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Sam Shepard as the inaugural play of the first-ever Ellen Steward Award — named after the famed founder and director of La MaMa— Olmos’s so go the ghosts of méxico, part one is inspired by the life of Marisol Valles Garcia, who stepped up to fill the place of a decapitated chief-of-police in the northern town of Praxadis, México only to be run out of the country by the drug cartels who threatened her life.

May 2: so go the ghosts of méxico, part two.Two warring gangs in which the reins of power shift, a drug trade economy relying on Los Estados Unidos as its best customer, the method of delivery is ever ‘changing’, and loyalty is up for bid.

May 11-12: He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box by Adrienne Kennedy explores a layering of images — those of the South, Elizabethan drama, and 1940s films — using them to unravel a mystery that echoes through the American consciousness from the past to the present day.