UPDATED: With the current health situation and needed social distancing guidelines, we are postponing our live performances. We are looking into creative ways to share this play online in the near future.
As part of the Pupil of the Eye Art Series, Green Acre is bringing Najee A. Brown’s The Bus Stop to stage for its Seacoast Premiere. With the art series, Green Acre seeks to elevate the conversation on race and the oneness of humanity using artistic expression. When writing The Bus Stop, playwright, producer, and director Najee A. Brown “wanted to show the effects that the prison system has not just on the black male, but the black woman who is often left behind.” The Bus Stop uses the power of live theater to not only show the effects of the prison system, gentrification, police brutality and the challenges of single motherhood, but also a deeper constructive resilience and transformation of the human spirit.
The Bus Stop centers around the lives of five black women who each have one thing in common: a loved one who is incarcerated. Although these women have varying backgrounds, meeting at the bus stop and forming a relationship with each other changes their lives forever. Experiencing the effects of his own father’s incarceration for the majority of his childhood, Brown brings vital insights to the themes of the play. Seeing his mother’s challenges and how she overcame them, he was inspired by her to create the vision, depth and dialogue of the characters.
Drawing deeply from their own experience, local actors Sandi Clark Kaddy, Denise Gordon, Naziana Kinard, Tiffany Colston, & Joanna Kelley along with New York City’s emerging artists Paul Gee and Tarrence J. Taylor, breath life into the characters and give a poignant power to the production.