The Light is a stunning conclusion to Ensemble's season.
While we critics have never included an award for the "Best Season by a Theater Company" in our annual "Best Of" announcement, this now-concluding season at the relocated Ensemble Theatre would qualify. Their season has been outstanding…So hats off to executive artistic director Celeste Cosentino and the entire Ensemble Theatre family. We look forward to their next season with great anticipation.
-Cleveland Scene Magazine, Christine Howey
Two Short Plays. Big Themes. One weekend ONLY! In Our Own Words: Our Stories, Our Voices, is a series Nicole Sumlin (SumMedia Productions) along with Ensemble Executive Artistic Director Celeste Cosentino started virtually during the pandemic. This series focuses on short plays that take on big themes, sharing the black experience with Cleveland audiences. This year will be our FIRST IN PERSON presentation!!
This Episode of Cleveland Premieres Includes:
Co-Directed by Nicole & Eugene Sumlin
Starring Christin Johnson, Zyrece Montgomery,
Drew Pope, Andrea Belser, & Carl Walton.
Performed JUNE 30th-JULY 2nd, 2023
A surprise proposal gift puts the future of Genesis and Rashad's relationship at risk when they are forced to confront a devastating secret from the past. The Light is a 70-minute, real-time rollercoaster ride of laughter, romance, and despair that uncovers how the power of radical love can be a healing beacon of light.
Directed by Jeannine Gaskin | Notre Dame Performing Arts Center | May 26-June 11, 2023
Every once in a while a theatergoer is blessed with an emotional and logical experience that lives for a long time in their being. Such is The Light, Loy A. Webb’s searing must-see play that is having its Cleveland area premiere at Ensemble Theater. -Cool Cleveland
On a moonless night in August when the sea trout are ready to run, a man brings his new girlfriend to the remote family cabin where he has come for the fly-fishing since he was a boy. But she's not the only woman he has brought here – or indeed the last. A bewitching story from the author of global smash hit Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth's play The River was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in October 2012.
Directed by Ian Wolfgang Hinz | Notre Dame Performing Arts Center | February 17- March 5th, 2023
In 1920, the Russian writer Isaac Babel wanders the countryside with the Red Cavalry. Seventy years later, a mysterious KGB agent spies on a woman in Dresden and falls in love. In 2010, an aircraft carrying most of the Polish government crashes in the Russian city of Smolensk. Set in Russia over the course of ninety years, this thrilling and epic play traces the stories of eight men and women connected by history, myth, and conspiracy theories.
Directed by Celeste Cosentino | Notre Dame Performing Arts Center | October 28th-November 13th, 2022
There are not many happy endings in this pieces, but there are exceptional performances plus a rich and bounteous tale that speaks volumes today.
-Christine Howey, Cleveland Scene Magazine
Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a razor-sharp satire about the politics of race. In response to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, playwright Bruce Norris set up Clybourne Park as a pair of scenes that bookend Hansberry’s piece. Act One takes place in 1959, as white community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home to a black family. Act Two is set in the same house in the present day, as the now predominantly African-American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification.
“CLYBOURNE PARK is Ensemble Masterclass at Ensemble Theatre” -Cleveland Scene Magazine
Directed by Celeste Cosentino
Notre Dame Performing Arts Center
September 23-October 9, 2022
