Cost
Free
Venue
Playwrights’ Center, 710 Raymond Ave, Saint Paul, MN 55114
Date/time
September 18 at 7:00 p.m.
M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A
by A. Van Jordan
adapted by abigail jean-baptiste
dramaturgy by Sam Morreale
A Northern Stage (Vermont) workshop reading in partnership with Playwrights’ Center
About the play
They say MacNolia Cox almost won The National Spelling Bee in 1936. They say this 13-year-old black girl from Akron, Ohio didn’t stand a chance in a segregated D.C. They say she died September 12th 1976, left discouraged and unmotivated by her loss. But what would she have to say about her own life and legacy? An ensemble of Black women and femmes gathers to imagine MacNolia’s perspective. A collaging of the award winning poetry collection by A. Van Jordan, this new play explores how we can be ready to spell our futures on our own terms.
This project was made possible by the Helen Gurley Brown Theater Ventures Fund.
This partnership is an example of Playwrights’ Center’s impact on the national theater field—providing valuable artistic support and resources for theaters across the country to develop and refine new work for their stages.
Making your reservation
This is an in-person, ticketed event at Playwrights’ Center on Friday, September 18 at 7:00 p.m.
Please use the sign up link below to reserve your spot in advance.
If you have any questions about making your reservation, please email us at rsvp@pwcenter.org.
When to arrive
All seating is general admission. We recommend arriving 10-15 minutes prior to the reading to check in and find your seat. Please note, free parking is limited around the Center.
Visit our About page to learn more about parking and accessibility.
Large groups
If you are making a reservation for more than eight people, please email rsvp@pwcenter.org to arrange. If you make a reservation for more than eight, a member of our Advancement team may be in touch closer to the reading date to confirm final numbers for your group.
abigail jean-baptiste
Playwright
Guided by questions around lineages of blackness, existential loneliness, and kinship, abigail’s work uses fragmented language and repeatable gestures in a search to build nonsensical ways of being. As a director, abigail shapes creative processes grounded in laughter, collectivity, close reading, black politic, critical race theory, and ethical rigor. They love working on plays that distort form and question normalcy, plays that engage with the traditions of experimental theater and radical queer black feminist thought.
