Artemisia’s World Premeire Goods Wins Two Kennedy Center Awards
Lauren Ferebee’s new play Goods, a sci-fi adventure about two intergalactic trash collectors receiving the 2021 Planet Earth Arts Playwrighting Award from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. The new play received its virtual world premiere May 5 and runs through May 30 via Chicago’s Artemisia Theatre.
The Planet Earth Arts Playwriting Award, created in partnership with the Planet Earth Arts Foundation, is given to plays that discuss sustainability and address the most urgent environmental and social justice issues of our time through the lens of arts and human creativity.
In addition, Goods is nominated for the Kennedy Center college festival’s National Partners in American Theatre Award, selected annually from among eight nominations from across the U.S. to recognize the year’s best-written, best-crafted script with the strongest writer’s voice. Ferebee, a rising young voice in contemporary feminist theater, is in her final year as an MFA candidate in playwriting at the University of Arkansas. She is also a playwright-in-residence at Artemisia Theatre with two virtual productions on tap in 2021: the world premiere of Goods in May, followed by Into a Blaze: The Triangle Shirtwaist, about the deadly 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist, streaming October 20-November 14, 2021.
Goods is the story of two intergalactic trash collectors, both women, one Black, one white, who are hurtling through space, ready to celebrate their return to Earth. Their spaceship might be small and dingy, but it keeps them from dealing with sinking cities, an out-of-control refugee crisis and their own personal histories. However, as they head toward the finish of their 20th anniversary route, an unexpected job forces them to confront the problems and choices of the world they’ve left behind and their relationship to one another.
Chicago stage legend and Artemisia Theatre board president E. Faye Butler directs. Artemisia founder and artistic director Julie Proudfoot is the producer and performs the role of Marla. Shariba Rivers makes her Artemisia debut as Sam. The Goods production team includes Willow James (sound), LaVisa Williams (costumes), Peter Sullivan of Marsten McCoy Media (videographer) and Lizzy Liebermann (assistant director and production manager).
Goods is a virtual, ticketed production streaming performances through May 30: Wednesday through Saturday @ 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $30. For tickets and information, visit artemisiatheatre.org. Note: ticket buyers will be sent a dedicated link and security code to access the production one hour before start time.
