LOVE BE LIKE …

By Clinnesha D. Sibley


Performances

Performances of this work have concluded

About the play

It’s 2015, the world is falling, hate crimes are increasing, and everyone’s questioning religion; but when nine churchgoers are targeted and murdered in a mass shooting during a prayer service in Charleston, South Carolina, a traumatized African-American couple is forced to reckon with faith, fear, and forgiveness in the digital age.

About the playwright

Clinnesha Dillon Sibley (Playwright) is a literary artist, educator, and humanities scholar. Her play Uprooted was in the 2012 Arkansas New Play Festival and later appeared at The Cell Theatre in New York and the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in Dallas. Other playwriting credits include: Tell Martha Not to Moan (Penumbra Theatre, Athena Project Arts Festival, The Union for Contemporary Arts); Naked: What Women and Their Bodies Represent to America (The Joust Theatre); Play Dead (Art House Production’s In Full Color Celebration of Women). She is a recipient of the Holland New Voices Award, Mississippi Theatre Association Playwriting Award, an Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, a National Arts Strategies Creative Communities Fellowship, and an Arts Institute of Mississippi (AIM) Award in Creative Writing. Her writing has also appeared in national literary journals, anthologies, and publications including HowlRound, Black Acting Methods, and Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama. She holds an M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Arkansas and a B.A. from Tougaloo College. She is currently the literary arts instructor at Mississippi School of the Arts.

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Learn more about the world of the play by exploring our virtual learning guide.



JAMES BOWEN (Bernard) returns to T2 after his recent performances as Marley/Ensemble in A Christmas Carol and as Tilney and Robert de Lesseps in Shakespeare in Love. Regional credits include Sherlock Holmes, The Tempest, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Driving Miss Daisy, King Lear, A Christmas Carol, Taming of the Shrew, Timon of Athens, Around the World in 80 Days, Macbeth, Travels With My Aunt, Henry VIII, Merry Wives of Windsor, Bear Country, Crowns, and the world premieres of Nobody and Rocket City (Alabama Shakespeare Festival); Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson (Plowshares Theatre Co.); Driving Miss Daisy, Of Mice and Men, Macbeth (Meadow Brook Theatre); A Midsummer's Night Dream, Hamlet (Michigan Shakespeare Festival); 74 Georgia Avenue, Never The Sinner (Jewish Ensemble Theatre). In his home state of Michigan, he has won Detroit area critics’ awards for his performances in Master Harold...and the Boys (Planet Ant Theatre), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Plowshares Theatre Co.), Driving Miss Daisy (Meadow Brook Theatre), K2 (The Performance Network), and as Louis Armstrong in How High the Moon (Plowshares Theatre Co.). He holds a B.F.A. in theatre from the University of Detroit.


NA’TOSHA DE’VON (Chrystal) returns to T2 having last appeared in The Royale as Nina. She also premiered her own one-person show in the 2019 Arkansas New Play Fest called Ain't I A Woman and appeared in the 2018 Arkansas New Play Fest as Susan in Staging the Daffy Dame. Other regional credits include As You Like It (Classical Edge Theatre); A Midsummer's Night Dream, A Dog’s Job (Trike Theatre); The Good People of Fayetteville (Arts Labs Theatre). Television credits include the TBN series Chase the Lion. She holds a B.A. in theatre and speech communication from Jackson State University and an M.F.A. in acting from the University of Arkansas.


JOSLYN JONES (Marguerite) returns to T2 having last appeared in Intimate Apparel, and in the reading of Andromeda at the 2016 Arkansas New Play Festival. Her theater credits include Flyin’ West (American Blues Theater Co.); Steel Magnolias (Theatre at the Center); The Project(s) (American Theater Company, Jeff Nomination, Best Production); The Delany Sisters: Having Our Say - The First Hundred Years (Fleetwood Jourdain Theatre); Once On This Island (Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre); 12 Ophelias (Trap Door Theatre); Weekend (TimeLine Theatre), Bourbon At The Border (Eclipse Theatre, BTAA Nomination, Featured Actress); Escape (Live Bait Theatre); Flyin’ West and RAISIN (Court Theatre); SPUNK (Court Theatre’s Artist in School Program); Bee-Luther-Hatchee (The University Of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); Fabulation: Or, The Re-Education of Undine (Next Theatre); Relevant Hearsay (MPACCT: Theater on the Lake); Bee-Luther-Hatchee and Smokey Joe's Café (Open Door Theater); Meshuggah Nuns! (Chicago Jewish Theatre); The Kurt Weil Revue: Songs of Darkness and Light (Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, Jeff Nomination, Best Musical Production); To Kill A Mockingbird (Metropolis Performing Arts Centre). Television credits include South Side (Comedy Central); Chicago PD (NBC). Film credits include Cherry (2020 release). She is a 2002 alumna of The School at Steppenwolf.


FELICIA WEBSTER (Stage Directions Reader) makes her T2 debut.


JORDAN WILLIAMS (Brian) makes his T2 debut.



DENISE CHAPMAN (Director) makes her T2 debut. An Omaha-based theatre practitioner, she is the producing artistic director of theatre at The Union for Contemporary Art and an adjunct professor at Metro Community College and the University of Nebraska Omaha. She holds a B.A. in theatre from Creighton University and a M.F.A. from the Theatre Conservatory at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She is an alumni of the fellowship program at the Union for Contemporary Art. She was an Artist in Residence at the Carver Bank project, a collaboration between Bemis and Theaster Gates and “Liveness is Critical” at the Bemis Center. Past directing credits include Blood at the Root (UNO and The Union); The Divine Order of Becoming, Bourbon at the Border, Center the Margins, and The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin. More Than Neighbors (The Union); The Crowd You’re in, Neighborhood Tapestries, Voices from the Center- Great Plains Theatre Festival (GPTC); Withlove Felicia, Love is not Abuse (Malcom X Center); House of Blue Leaves, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Circle Theatre); The Good Doctor (Creighton University); Sand Mountain and Brighton Beach Memoirs (Midland Lutheran University); Sweet, Tell Martha Not to Moan, Marvelous Country, Turpentine Jake (Readings for GPTC); The Nightshade Tapes, Hello Madness, If, and Hysterical Blindness 3 (Blue Barn’s Witching Hour).


NAYSAN MOJGANI (Dramaturg) is a freelance dramaturg and the literary manager for Arena Stage in Washington, DC, where he is a key member of the new play development program and serves as in-house production dramaturg. As a theatre scholar, director, and dramaturg, he has worked on new and classic work with theatres in San Diego and Minnesota, including MOXIE, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, and Malashock Dance, and has taught at UC San Diego and George Mason University. He holds a PhD in theatre & drama from UC San Diego, and a B.A. from Carleton College.


SHANNON A. JONES (Production Stage Manager) is the resident production stage manager for T2, where she has both assisted and stage managed 30+ productions and Arkansas New Play Festival workshops since 2014, including Once, I and You, and All the Way. Regional work includes stage management at theatres across the U.S., including Orlando Repertory Theatre and New London Barn Playhouse. She holds a B.F.A. in stage management from the University of Central Florida.


Digital Production Team

Alex Carr (Audio Technical Support)
Morgan Hicks (Zoom Support Lead)
Franklin Horvath (Lighting Technical Support)
Roland Liwag (Video Technical Support)
Kat Wepler (Director of Production)


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