NEVERDARK SERIES 2020

Outstanding Performances Brought to Life Online

Thursday, Aug 13th – Sunday, Aug 16th  |  Watch Online

The Way North

A New Play by Tira Palmquist  |  Directed by Dawn Simmons

When a lost, cold and very pregnant young woman stumbles on to her rural homestead in the Minnesota wilderness, Freddy Hanson doesn’t hesitate to take her in. It’s the right thing to do, and as the county’s former Sheriff, Freddy has dedicated her life to protecting and serving others. But when her new guest turns out to be a Sudanese refugee making a run for the Canadian border, what it means to protect and serve becomes a more complicated, and far more dangerous, question.

The Way North, which was developed at the 2018 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, was a finalist for the 2018 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2019 Blue Ink Playwriting Award. The Way North was also featured in the following festivals: The Festival of New American Plays (Phoenix Theater), the Human Rights New Works Festival (Red Mountain Theater), the Page-by-Page Festival (Pioneer Theater) and the Road Theater’s Summer New Works Festival.

This production is FREE to view thanks to the Shubert Foundation, the Applied Materials Foundation, and our donors who have made contributions to Gloucester Stage this season. Please consider making a gift with your complimentary ticket purchase to help continue our mission on Cape Ann.

There are a limited number of ‘seats’ available. Reserve your ticket ONLINE and a video link and password will be emailed to you immediately. Your ticket will have a date & time on it, but you will have access to watch at any time from August 13th – 16th.

Runtime 84mins

CAST LIST

JACKIE DAVIS* – Freddy Hanson, a former sheriff in a northern Minnesota county

YEWANDE ODETOYINBO* – Agnes Kurr, a mother

REGINE VITAL – Alex Hanson, Freddy’s daughter, an accountant

BOB MUSSET – Dan Williams, sheriff in northern Minnesota county

*Member Actors Equity Association (AEA)

Actor Bios

JACKIE DAVIS* (Freddy Hanson) is involved in all three disciplines, theater, television and film. She is director, actor and choreographer working primarily on the east coast. She can be seen as abolitionist, Susan Robbins, in Colombia Pictures’ Film, Little Women. Notable directing credits include Race, Ruined, and For Colored Girls Who Consider Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Notable choreography projects include Dance Nation, Beauty & The Beast, and The Wiz. Notable stage credits include:Trinity Repertory Theater – Benevolence: black odyssey; The woman in Furs: Marisol; Jacques One: A Tale of Two Cities. Lyric Stage: Jackie: Saturday Night/Sunday Morning. Marie: Barbecue. Speakeasy Stage: Siobhan: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. She is the founding artistic director of New Urban Theater Laboratory, where she produced and directed five years of new works in Massachusetts. She has served as an Intimacy coordinator on “References to Salvador Dali Make me Hot.” Jackie is a teaching artist for Trinity Repertory Company’s Education Department and a Master Teacher for their Young Actors Summer Institute. She is on staff as a movement instructor for the Brown/Trinity MFA program, R&B(m): Rhythm and Body (movement). She is currently involved as a director/producer for an upcoming web-series: From A Distance. Jackie is a member of Actors Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild.

 

YEWANDE ODETOYINBO* (Agnes Kurr) is a native of Detroit, MI and a proud graduate of Howard University, where she earned a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre and became a member of Sigma Alpha Iota. She also earned an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre Performance from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She returns to WFT having performed as Daniela in In The Heights and Sour Kangaroo in Seussical. Some of her favorite performances include roles in Fannie Lou at Carnegie Hall, the national tour of Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds (Adventure Theatre), Trav’lin: The 1930s Harlem Musical (Seven Angels Theatre), Show Boat (Reagle Music Theatre and Fiddlehead Theatre), Passing Through (Goodspeed Opera House), Finish Line (Boston Theatre Company) and The Wiz (Lyric Stage Company). She was most recently seen in as Angel Mo’ in Breath and Imagination; a co- production with the Front Porch Arts Collective and Lyric Stage Company. It is her lifelong dream not only to perform and teach theatre to inner-city youth, but also to open up a performing arts school in Nigeria.  She thanks the Lord for His many blessings and her family (especially Mom, Dad and Yemisi) and friends for their love and support. Also thank you to Nick and the WTF. Ase!

 

 

REGINE VITAL (Alex Hanson) (she/her/hers) is an actor/scholar/educator/writer/theatremaker/storyteller from Somerville, MA. She received her BA in English and History from Boston University and her MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from UMass Boston. She recently spent time in the UK studying Early Modern English Drama and Texts, focusing on Shakespeare, at King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe. Currently, she works in the Education department at the Huntington Theatre Company. As an actor, she has appeared in many projects with several Boston area theatre companies, including Central Square Theatre, Asian American Playwright’s Collective, Flat Earth Theatre, Open Theatre Project, HUB Theatre Company, and Also Known As Theatre. When she isn’t telling stories on stage or talking too much about Shakespeare, Regine loves a good book, a good dance, and/or a great chat with great friends. Merde, folks!

 

BOB MUSSETT (Dan Williams) a Boston-based actor, recent credits include Peter & The Starcatcher and True West (Hub Theatre), The Nether (Flat Earth Theatre), The 39 Steps (Moonbox Productions, IRNE best supporting actor), The Real Thing (Bad Habit Productions, IRNE nominee), and the past four yearly Winter Pantos (imaginary beasts). He is also an ensemble member with the ongoing and hilarious Sh*t-Faced Shakespeare in Somerville. Love to the rest of the cast, crew, and Sarah.

Dawn M. Simmons (Director) Theatre: Pipeline (Central Square Theater) The Wiz, Warrior Class, Saturday Night Sunday Morning (Lyric Stage Company of Boston); With Glittering Eyes (Hibernian Hall); Macbeth (Actors’ Shakespeare Project); The Three Musketeers (The Front Porch Arts Collective/Greater Boston Stage Company); The Irish and How They Got That Way (Greater Boston Stage Company); Just Cause (The Boston Project), Men On Boats (SpeakEasy Stage Company); The Real Inspector Hound (Bad Habit Productions); Hard and Fast: A Love Story (Boston Public Works); Smile (New Exhibition Room); The Embryos (Fresh Ink Theatre), Dawn is the Artistic Director and co-founder of The Front Porch Arts Collective, Online: FrontPorchArts.org and Executive Director and proud member of StageSource: StageSource.org

TIRA PALMQUIST is known for plays that merge the personal, the political and the poetic. Her most produced play, Two Degrees, premiered at the Denver Center, and was subsequently produced by Tesseract Theater in St. Louis and Prime Productions at the Guthrie (among others). Her newest play The Way North was a Finalist for the O’Neill, an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Kilroys List, and will be featured in the 2019 Ashland New Plays Festival.

This year, Tira has been working on several new commission projects: The Worth of Water, the 2018 Clutch Productions commission, will go up in NYC in October, directed by Mélisa Annis. Tira’s commission for Lower Depth Theater Ensemble in Los Angeles. Safe Harbor, a play about sex trafficking, will premiere in November in LA. Tira has also been commissioned to write new work for the UCI graduate acting students. Her play Hold Steady was workshopped at UCI in February 2019, and she is currently working All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, to be workshopped in February 2020.

Her other plays include Ten Mile Lake (Serenbe Playhouse), Age of Bees (NYU Stella Adler Studio, MadLab Theater, Tesseract), And Then They Fell (MadLab, Brimmer Street, New York Film Academy) and This Floating World.

Two Degrees has been featured in numerous festivals (including the 11th Annual Denver Center New Play Summit, the New American Voices festival in the UK, the Caltech 2014 Mach 33 Festival and the 2014 Great Plains Theater Conference) and had its World Premiere in the Denver Center’s 2016/17 Season. Two Degrees was also listed in the Honorable Mention list for the 2016 Kilroys. Ten Mile Lake, which premiered in 2014 at Serenbe Playhouse just outside of Atlanta, GA, was developed and workshopped in 2012 at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and was a finalist for the 2015 Primus Prize.

Tira teaches creative writing at the Orange County School of the Arts, and has also taught at Wesleyan University and the University of California-Irvine. She is a member of the Playwrights Union, the Anteaus Theater’s Playwrights Lab and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Her work as a director and dramaturg includes several seasons at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and the New Territories Playwriting Residency, a program she developed with Brian Clowdus at Serenbe Playhouse in Georgia. More info at www.tirapalmquist.com.

How do I watch online? 

You can watch the video via several platforms. Here are specific instructions and links to helpful Vimeo articles. You will receive a link via email immediately when you reserve a free ticket online. Check spam or email info@gloucesterstage.com if you don’t receive this confirmation.

Watch via your computer’s web browser:

  • Follow the link that was sent to you in your email
  • Enter the password when prompted.

 

Watch via your Phone (on an app or the browser):

It doesn’t matter if you have the Vimeo app.

  • Follow the link that was sent to you in your email.
  • Enter the password when prompted.

 

Watch via your TV streaming device:

This article in Vimeo’s help section will let you know what TV streaming devices have Vimeo apps.

There is a multi-step process for watching a password-protected video using a Vimeo app on a TV streaming device. The first part can be done on a web browser or a phone app.

Web Browser, iPad, or iPhone:

  • Go to http://vimeo.com and create a Vimeo account. If you already have one, log in.
  • Go back to your email and follow the link that was provided in your email.
  • Enter the password when prompted. You will then have access to the video.
  • In the upper right hand corner of the video screen you will see a heart icon and a clock icon. Click the clock icon. This adds the video to your “Watch Later” list.
  • Note: On an iPhone there are three dots just below the lower right hand side of the video screen and if you click those you will see a “Watch Later”. Select that and you will see a notification that you have saved it to your watch list.

 

First, install the Vimeo app on your TV Streaming Device. Then, go to your TV app:

Open the Vimeo App on your Smart TV or Streaming Device.

  • Log in using the same account that you used to save the video to your “Watch Later” list. You should see the video saved there and now available to be played. If you are already logged into your account on your AppleTV or Roku when you add the video to your “Watch Later” list, it may not appear on your list on your TV until you logout and log back in, again (this is what happened to us).
  • The Vimeo app for AppleTV’s has been fixed!

 

Watching the video on your Apple TV using Airplay:

From the Vimeo website: “With your device connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Apple TV, start playing a video and tap the AirPlay icon in the lower right-hand corner of the player. Just like that, your selected video will begin playing on your TV.”

(Watching) Casting a Video on a Chromecast:

From the Vimeo website: “With your device connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Chromecast, start playing a video and tap the Chromecast icon in the lower right-hand corner of the player. In mere moments, your selected video will begin playing on your TV. You can continue browsing Vimeo on your device while your video plays, and control playback on your TV using the Chromecast controls at the bottom of the app.”