to be still by Crystal Adaway
Joe’s Movement emporium, october 18 - 27, 2024, Live!
January 24 - February 6, 2025, streaming!
Poetic drama about grief and faith in ‘to be still’ from Pipeline Playwrights
October 20, 2024
DC Theater Arts
By Gregory Ford
to be still by Crystal Adaway — produced by Pipeline Playwrights — is about the grief that we experience when a being we have a relationship with dies. There is nothing novel to see or hear in this play. The same questions that come up in every human encounter around death remain: Why? Why now? Will I ever see them again? Who can I blame for the way I am hurting now? Will I ever stop hurting? If there is such a thing as God, why would He (inevitably, He) set things up this way? As the popular saying goes: “Make it make sense.” And herein lies one of the primary reasons for the existence and persistence of religion.
Stream To Be Still Before February 6
January 29, 2025
The Humanist.com
by Emily Newman
. . . To Be Still grew from a Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive workshop assignment in 2018 where participants were directed to write a monologue inspired by a photograph. Award-winning playwright Crystal Adaway shared how the exercise led her to more ideas she needed to explore:
“I chose the photo showing an old barn sitting in flood waters. I grew up on a farm, so I was drawn immediately to the image, then thought about how it would feel to be in that water, in that moment, as a mother, having lost the most precious thing in the world to a natural disaster, an ‘act of God’ as people call it.”
Questions swirled and eddied . . .
Wednesdays in Mississippi by Nicole Burton
Joe’s Movement emporium, November 10 - 19, 2023, Live!
January 14 - February 8, 2024, streaming!
Here’s to the ladies who stood for civil rights, on ‘Wednesdays in Mississippi’
A world premiere from Pipeline Playwrights sheds light on civic-minded women from the North who traveled weekly to the South for social justice.
DC Theater Arts
November 13, 2023
By Debbie Minter Jackson
Wednesdays in Mississippi, a world-premiere play by Nicole Burton, shows the difference that women made collectively and individually to uproot longstanding racist societal barriers in the 1960s during Freedom Summer and beyond. The show sheds light on a little-known group of civic-minded Northern-based women who traveled weekly to various Southern sites, mostly in Mississippi, encouraging, funding, and coaching local groups to change. Nurtured by Pipeline Playwrights, Burton adapted the book Wednesdays in Mississippi by Debbie Z. Harwell . .
‘Wednesdays in Mississippi’ presented by Pipeline Playwrights at Joe’s Movement Emporium
. . . a strong cast…sharing a very important story about women who tirelessly fought for equality during a very turbulent time in our country.
MD Theatre Guide
November 13, 2023
By Anne Valentino
Nicole Burton’s “Wednesdays in Mississippi” depicts a snapshot of the Civil Rights movement as experienced by a group of women from northern regions of the country who traveled to cities and towns across Mississippi during the mid-1960s. Based on the award-winning book by Debbie Z. Harwell, their mission was to “build bridges of understanding” and, in this way, try to mitigate the racial violence and palpable hate that existed in pockets of the Mississippi region.
Unprotected by Jean Koppen
Theatre on the Run, October 14 - 15, 20 - 23, 2022, live!
November 8 - 22, 2022 streaming!
A girl’s trauma at school precipitates ‘Unprotected’ by Pipeline Playwrights
DC Theatre Arts
October 17, 2022
by Gwyneth Sholar
An affecting and important new play by Jean Koppen that takes on harm, safety, and justice.
It sometimes feels as though smaller theater companies aren’t able to stage the most subversive material. I’ve often seen that the most groundbreaking art comes to the big names in the DMV, those with the most most time and resources to produce or commission it. But I always want to be proved wrong in that thought, because there is so much power in communal efforts, and so much to say within our communities. That’s why it felt fantastic to see Unprotected, produced by the Pipeline Playwrights collective in Arlington’s Theatre on the Run last week.
(read more. . . )
Heartland by Patricia Connelly
JOE’S MOVEMENT EMPORIUM, JUNE 24- 26, 2022, LIVE!
JULY 20 - AUGUST 3, 2022 STREAMING!
Pipeline Playwrights’ heartfelt and timely ‘Heartland’ to stream on demand
DC Theater Arts
June 28, 2022
by Gregory Ford
Heartland is a heartfelt and timely piece of theater.
This production from women’s collective Pipeline Playwrights arrives at the same time that Roe v. Wade (the 50-year-old decision that acknowledged a woman’s right to an abortion) has been overturned by the post-Trump Supreme Court. The majority in that ruling hold views similar to the religious coalition represented in this play and are presumed to be planning (as announced by Judge Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion) to overturn the right to access birth control, the legality of same-sex relationships, gay marriage, and other “demonstrably erroneous” decisions stemming from the Fourteenth Amendment. The stakes both onstage and in real life are high.
(read more. . .)
A Very Present Presence by Ann Timmons
ZOOM WORLD PREMIERE, JUNE 2021
MD THEATRE GUIDE
‘A Very Present Presence’ presented by Pipeline Playwrights
By Mary Ann Johnson - June 06, 2021
In this world premier of Ann Timmons’ “A Very Present Presence,” we meet a middle-aged mother and career woman who has come to the end of her rope. The story may seem similar to many others (for those of a certain age, I was reminded of an episode of “One Day At A Time” from about 45 years ago), but is given a fresh spark by linking the present day to the lives of her great-grandmother and great-aunt.
. . . a fun, light-hearted look at sea changes in oneself and society at large. (read more…)
DC METRO THEATER ARTS
A woman’s liberation through generations in ‘A Very Present Presence’ from Pipeline Playwrights
By Darby DeJarnette - June 3, 2021
Can daughters and granddaughters ever really understand the internal experiences of their mothers and grandmothers?
A Very Present Presence, written by Ann Timmons and directed by Catherine Tripp, is the latest streaming offering from the women’s collective Pipeline Playwrights. Timmons states that this comedy examines “the theme of social and generational connection: the idea that individual choice is always shaped by experiences of/expectations from the past.” (read more…)