Pittsburgh Public Theater Playwrights-in-Residence, Annalisa Dias, and Ronee Penoi will present their new musical, The Carlisle Project, in a live staged reading at the O’Reilly Theater on Wednesday, May 10, at 7:00 pm.
The Carlisle Project explores the legacy of forced assimilation at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It was America’s largest indigenous boarding school from 1879 through 1918. Bringing together ceremony, satire, and song, The Carlisle Project grapples with the generational trauma of colonization, working to re-story Indigenous people’s pasts while offering a perspective of an Indigenous future.
Thousands of students from more than 140 Indigenous tribes attended the Carlisle Industrial School in its nearly 40 years of operation. Hundreds of private and government-run boarding schools were modeled after Carlisle. The Carlisle Indian School was founded with the express purpose of forced assimilation, with students’ customs, culture, and heritage stripped from them. Hundreds of children died while attending the school, and hundreds are still buried there today. The site today is home to the U.S. Army War College.
“The legacy of Carlisle Industrial School is one that deeply affects my family,” co-writer Ronee Penoi said. “I see it as very personal work to bring this history, and the questions facing Native people today, to broader view.”
The Carlisle Project marks the second year of The Public’s modern Playwrights-in-Residence program, an initiative that began in the theater’s inaugural season in 1974. The Public’s inaugural modern playwright-in-residence Mark Clayton Southers’ The Coffin Maker, debuted in a workshop at The Public in 202. Southers’ production will receive its world premiere at The Public to close the theater’s 2023/2024 season.
“Bringing this project home to Pittsburgh is truly special,” co-writer Annalisa Dias said. “As a kid, I participated in all of PPT’s education programs, so to return to the O’Reilly as a professional artist is incredibly meaningful.”
You can find more information about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School at www.carlisleindianschoolproject.com.
Tickets to the live staged reading of The Carlisle Project on Wednesday, May 10, at 7:00 pm, are available at www.ppt.org/carlisle.
The Public’s Engagement Manager, Jalina McClarin, will moderate a discussion following the show with the creative team about the process of bringing this work to life.
Categories: Preview, Show Previews
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