Penguin Sex With Mr. Morgan: A Cabaret for an Apocalypse by Dhari Noel ‘25 MFA directed by Andrew Watring ‘23 MFA Reading: 2/11 11 AM 2/12 1 PM Leeds Theatre 83 Waterman Street, Providence RI 02912 click here for tickets A burlesque apocalypse in three parts. As the ice melts melts melts, Baby, a punk rock penguin, leads a revolt. And the clothes can’t help but fall off. But wait, Morgan Freeman’s voice looms, telling us what to do, what not to do, what we must do, what do we want him to do, this Body-Named-Black. Ice melts melts melts. Another layer peels to the ground. It’s so cold that it’s fiery hot. Twenty minutes left: and wait, there’s more… but I thought you said this was a burlesque? Ice melt melt melt. A striptease down to our raw parts.
Dhari Noel (he/him) is a Queer Black-Caribbean playwright, performer, and educator born and raised in Harlem. Dhari’s writing often explores the incoherence of race, the failures of gender, and inherited ways of being. His recent plays include: Man Made, Spirit Junkie (Cherry Picking, The Wild Project), Exorcism for The DEI Practitioner (Cherry Picking), and Keep The Orange (ECFS). Dhari’s recent performances include: Man Made, Spirit Junkie (Cherry Picking, The Wild Project), Black Exhibition (Bushwick Starr), In The Penal Colony (Next Door at NYTW, The Tank), Floater, Ride (Cherry Picking). As a teacher, Dhari uses storytelling, social justice, and interdisciplinary studies all in an effort to examine systems of power. Dhari has a BA in Sociology from Columbia University. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Playwriting at Brown University. He is adjusting but misses the Harlem noises. Andrew Watring (Andrew) is a Black trans Object-theatre-creator, director, award-winning playwright, producer, performer, and Anarkata-in-training from sweet home Huntsville, Alabama. Andrew's career has been dedicated to the creation and continued cultivation of Shakespeare is a White Supremacist, a thearical ritual grounded in Shakespeare’s colonizing effect on the American theatre; most recently staged with Main Street Players (Miami-Dade, FL). Select directing credits include: RENT, Angels in America, The Henriad, Richard III, White Noise, Hamletmachine, Passing: A Stage Play, Coriolanus. Andrew was a member of the Directors Lab North (2021); graduate of the Theatre Lab Life Stories Institutie (2019); an Honored Playwright at the New South Young Playwright’s Festival (2018). Andrew founded and served as the Artistic Director of the Fractal Theatre Collective, an anti-capitalist arts organization that embraced community-led, direct action as an integral element of theatrical design. Andrew’s projects currently in development: Charles Town: A Black. Queer. Providence; Old God, or In The Old Tradition; Trans Racial; The 9th Street Black Preservation Society. Andrew holds a BA in Theatre from American University, and is an MFA candidate at Brown University / Trinity Repertory Company. https://www.andrewwatring.com/