Needra and Marlene enjoy a perfect post-racial friendship until “black” robots walk into their lives. These automatons, based on Westinghouse’s 1930 brown-skinned robots, place them at opposite ends of society in an alternate past. This hilarious comedy delves into our traumatic legacy and explores new ideas about how to move forward.
Lisa Langford is a playwright and actress. After working with Dr. Maya Angelou to develop Dr. Angelou’s line of social expressions, she earned an M.F.A. in play-writing from Cleveland State University. Her play, Rastus and Hattie, received a Joyce Award (w/ Cleveland Public Theatre) and was a finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Lisa’s other plays include The Art of Longing, a finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers; How Blood Go, an August Wilson New Play Initiative reading series selection at Chicago’s Congo Square Theatre and Global Black Voices selection at the Roundhouse Theatre in London UK; Teddy Bear Mountain, a children's play about grief; and two ten-minute plays, The Bomb and Revolt. Ing, which was part of the I Am…Festival at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. She is an Artistic Associate of Black Lives Black Words and a member of Dobama Theatre’s Playwrights’ Gym in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Honor Roll!, an advocacy group for women+ playwrights over 40. Lisa is also a graduate of Harvard University.