WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — The Chalkboard Trilogy, a play opening uptown on Friday, tells a story that unites Washington Heights with historic South Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan through one common theme: literacy.
The new play written by Nancy Nevarez “follows three teachers across three provocative landscapes as they struggle with their students and their environments to pass on the gift of literacy,” according to its creators.
In South Carolina, an elderly man and his niece sign up for a forbidden voter’s registration class. In Afghanistan, where girls are forbidden to read, a teacher and student risk it all to discover the written word.
And in Washington Heights, the story charts the progress of a tutor who spends six years teaching an unwilling boy to read. The boy can’t see the benefit until he is “suddenly thrust into manhood,” reads a release about the play.
Mino Lora, the play’s director, says the trilogy “will take you on a 90 minute emotional journey through time, countries, and cultures.”
“It is storytelling at its best as it creates hope at every corner,” she wrote in a Facebook email. “A true artistic celebration of life and the power of education."
The play is put on by the UP Theater Company with support from the People's Theatre Project, Broadway Housing Communities and a Neighborhood Fund Grant from the New York-Presbyterian, Columbia University Medical Center Fund.
The UP Theater Company began offering professionally produced performances last year when a group of theater people worked to bring live theater above 155th Street.
The Chalkboard Trilogy begins Friday and runs through Nov. 13 at the Broadway Temple, 4111 Broadway at West 173rd Street. A discussion about the play will immediately follow the Sunday, Nov. 6, 3 p.m. performance of the play. Special guest moderator Carlos Serrano, playwright Nancy Nevarez and director Mino Lora, along with members of the cast, will discuss the play and take audience questions.
Tickets are $18, $10 for students and seniors and can be purchased online.
