Staged Readings
Come see TEN brand new works through at The Flea as part of the 7th annual Rogue Theater Festival.
Ordinary Girls
By Elin Hampton
Monday, August 4th
8pm
In 1939, as World War II raged, sisters Freddie (14) and Truus Oversteegen (16) are recruited by the Dutch Resistance for a specific mission: Seduce high-ranking Nazi Officers, lure them into the woods and kill them. Soon they’re partnered with 19-year-old Hannie Schaft – the infamous ‘Girl with the Red Hair’ for whom Hitler personally issued a capture/kill order. This is the true story of these three ‘ordinary girls’ as they experience a brutal and altogether eccentric coming-of-age. It’s a tale of extraordinary courage, sisterly love, loyalty, and ultimately the cost of political violence, no matter how righteous the cause.
House
By Madi Fabber
Tuesday, August 5th
8pm
8
Four theater kids–three queer and one questioning–put their political leanings aside to vie for the biggest roles of the season: spots in their church's annual Hell House. Unsure of how to reconcile their identities with the traditional religious values they're promoting through their acting, the teens decide to return to the whimsy of childhood and play house together. As the game unravels, secret desires and supernatural forces threaten to destroy the reality they thought they knew.
Clean Slate
By Rachel Leighson
Wednesday, August 6th
11am
Two years after a world-wide nuclear war, four souls collide on the road to recovery. Mac is a professor, Cam is a chef, Lez is an actor, and Tal is a scientist. For what any of that means when it all disappears. With jobs to do, pasts to wrestle, ghosts to settle, and a future to secure, the question becomes: if you can't look back, how do you move forward?
Our Mother, Thou Aren't in Heaven
By Caitland Winsett
Wednesday, August 6th
8pm
Quinn and Aurora have not seen each other since Quinn ran away from home at 18. Now, years later, the girls are reunited at their mother's funeral. Memories of the past and beliefs of the present must be reconciled.
Red River Falls
By Steven Haworth
Thursday, August 7th
8pm
In Edina, Minnesota, in 1973, Charles is 16 and terrifying his deeply religious parents. Suddenly his schoolwork is excellent, he tells the truth about everything and claims he has been transported through lucid dreams to his 84th year where he looks back in dream at a misspent life. Is he driven mad by fanatical parents? A crush on his civics teacher Miss Swanson? Guilt over his previous drug dealing? A dark comedy about time, regret, love, ideological tragedy, and redeeming a life not yet lived.
Spelling Club
By Danielle Breitstein
Friday, August 8th
8pm
Being out as a witch in Redacted, Texas isn’t safe, so teen witches Sully, Laz and Rowena hide their identities in school. The only place they can be themselves is Ms. Sophie’s Classroom. But when their safe space is threatened by Ms. Hardy, the new, Bible-grasping Principal, the witches formulate a fake “Spelling Club” to keep her off their backs. While they’re forced to enroll in a spelling bee, Spelling Club becomes a hub for these witches to escape demons they face on a daily, not including the two actual demons from hell they accidentally summon.
Flowers for Men
By Christian Mendonca
Saturday, August 9th
1pm
A social worker with funding for a pilot program brings together a group of men in a community garden to unpack their understandings of masculinity. At each session, they must care for an assigned flower that represents a fragile relationship in their personal lives. Will this group of six men make it out of this program ready to grow, or will they be hell-bent on (self-)destruction? A review of toxic masculinity, machismo, forgiveness, and scarcity of grace and self-love in male-identifying communities.
A Sign You
Were Alive
By Rebecca Kane
Saturday, August 9th
8pm
James is a single father desperately trying to protect his teenage daughter Chelsea after a mysterious pandemic turns her into a vampire. The pair go into hiding together, threatened by her growing hunger for blood and possibly dangerous nosy neighbors, but manage to bond through an endless canon of vampire movies for research.
Flow
By Jordan Jaffe
Sunday, August 10th
1pm
Flow is a two-hander that follows the unlikely friendship between Charlie, a Texas oilman turned diplomat, and Marwan, an Arab royal minister, as they navigate their business relationship and political ambitions—shaped by culture and the pursuit of power, against the volatile Middle East of 1960's and 1970's. Through wars, embargoes, betrayals, and moments of unexpected grace, Charlie and Marwan wrestle with philosophy, loyalty, and the price of empire. At once political thriller and intimate elegy, Flow asks: can friendship survive the machinery of history?
Chapter Meeting
By Taylor Gonzalez
Sunday, August 10th
8pm
An all-night DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) chapter meeting in Brooklyn devolves into chaos and violence when one member reveals the unthinkable: he got a job. This scathing two-act comedy pokes fun at our own—specifically, the big-city, millennial leftists—while still addressing pressing matters that concern society today.