The University of Maryland Baltimore County's Theatre Department is proud to present a Baltimore premiere of Los Angeles-based playwright Caridad Svich's Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues.

Svich is one of America's most distinctive new voices in playwriting. Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues transforms everyday American speech into poetry to reveal the story of Simone, a young woman whose new husband has been killed in an unnamed war. As Simone, immersed in grief, struggles to reconnect with her lost husband, the community of women around her attempt to retrieve her back to the world of the living. Steeped in ritual and magic from the everyday to the extraordinary, Alchemy ponders the responsibilities of the living to the dead and of the living to one another.

Caridad Svich (playwright) is the 1997-98 NEA/Theatre Communications Group Playwright in Residence at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Alchemy was originally produced at the Cincinnati Playhouse and has subsequently been seen in theaters in New York, Minneapolis, Seattle, London and Canada. Earlier this year, Svich was invited to be in residence at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland and led playwriting master classes at Paine's Plough Theatre in London. She is an affiliated artist with the Women's Project and New Georges in New York. Among her awards, Svich counts the California Arts Council Fellowship, a Theatre Communications Group/Pew Observer-ship, a Latino Theatre Initiative Fellowship, and the Rosenthal New Play Prize. Her play Gleaning/Rebusca is featured in the collection Shattering the Myth published by Arte Publico Press, and she is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology of Latino/a plays and performance texts Out of the Fringe published by the Theatre Communications Group.

Director: Rebecca Brown, UMBC Theatre Department
Sets: Evan Alexander, New York City
Costumes: Elena Zlotescu, UMBC Theatre Department
Lighting/sound: Terry Cobb, UMBC Theatre Department

CAST:
Simone: Michelle Pinkham
Selah: Kate Volpe
Miranda: Brook Schumann
Tirasol: Jen Bryson
Caroline: Robyn Miller
Jamie: Kyle Riley

For further information and ticket purchases, please call 410/ 455-2476.
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