We did it! Lobby Theatre @ AGBO presents an enhanced reading of Aleshea Harris’s Obie Award-winning Is God Is.
Opening night photos:
Joe Russo, AGBO Principal and Robin Larsen, Lobby Theatre Artistic Director
Christopher Breyer, Lobby Literary Director and Aleshea Harris, Is God Is Playwright
Sarah Finn, Is God Is Casting Director and Joe Russo, AGBO Principal
Photo credit: Shiloh Strong Photography, Vincent K. Caruso
Is God Is company: Steven Klein (producer), Roger Guenveur Smith, Spence Moore II, Jayme Lawson, Dominique Thorne, Aleshea Harris (playwright), Robin Larsen (director), Andrew Carlberg (producer), Regina Taylor, Camrus Johnson, Andre Royo, Merle Dandridge (not pictured)
Artistic Director’s Program Note
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to tonight’s reading of Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is and what is the inaugural offering of Lobby Theatre, a new theatre established by myself and my colleagues with the indispensable support of my old friend and collaborator Joe Russo and Joe and his brother Anthony’s studio, AGBO.
Lobby Theatre is the product of many longstanding goals and impulses, but on the occasion of our launch, I will articulate two of them. The first is key to why we are doing Aleshea’s remarkable play, which has yet to be produced in Los Angeles, with this remarkable cast in a staging that plays with form.
Dramatic storytelling was born with the theatre. Its history spans 2700 years of stage drama and the century or so of mass media that have made Los Angeles home to a population of storytelling artists equal to any in the world. Lobby Theatre hopes to continue to draw on L.A.’s unmatched creative resources to make theatre that advances dramatic storytelling in all its forms and, far more importantly our understanding of our world.
We are also here to foster community, and you are our first community. We have created ways to connect with you around the play we will see together this evening. We hope you will engage with us and each other in the days and weeks ahead, and that it will help you understand a little more about what it is to be human.
