OPENING NOVEMBER 2, 2017

VENUS THEATRE’S 62nd WOMEN EMPOWERING PLAY

by ALANA VALENTINE | directed by Deborah Randall

November 2 - 26, 2017

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday @ 8:00 p.m. and Sunday @ 3:00 p.m.

Truth may seem but cannot be; Beauty brag but is not she; Truth and Beauty buried be. The Ravens is about Kira, a trying-to- be-ex sex worker in Kings Cross, Sydney, Australia. When she receives a large victim’s compensation payout, deciding what to do with the money becomes more of a problem than a relief. A friend from her former life feels that she is ‘owed’ by Kira, and moves back into her life and her flat. Then a chance meeting with Nina, a young social work student working at the local chocolate shop, seems like it might give Kira the courage and support she needs to finally get the violent Marg out of her life. An encounter with one of Nina’s old age clients at a nursing home focuses Kira’s determination but now she wants to help her friend Nancy, who is still working at a brothel but living in a dominating lesbian relationship. Finally Nina suggests that she might use the money for her and Nancy to put on a play – a version of Shakespeare’s poem The Phoenix and the Turtle. It’s a routine Kira and Nancy used to do as a striptease for an old client – can they learn to change themselves, phoenix like, into something other than they have been for so long? Can love – of life, of self, of friends - be resurrected and transformed by art? As an evocative radio play, The Ravens won the 2015 BBC International Radio Writing Award from the BBC World Service. Venus Theatre is delighted to be presenting the world premiere of the stage play - a visceral, provocative work of fierce insight and compassion for womens’ struggle out of violence.

Press Release

Program

By Alana Valentine
Directed by Deborah Randall

Kira played by Suzanne Edgar
Nina played by Erin Lee Hanratty
Nancy and Multiples played by Alison Talvacchio
Marg and Multiples played by Ashley Kissandra

Lights and Set by Amy E Belschner Rhodes
Sound by Neil McFadden
Masks by Tara Cariaso
Costumes and Props by Deborah Randall

Dance choreography by Alison Talvacchio
Fight choreography by Deborah Randall

- Photos by Mike Landsman -

“Venus Theatre has a knack for finding new scripts that make you ache and ruminate all at once—appealing at once to emotion and intellect, deeply, endlessly.

Too Perfect for Words.
- Kelly McCorkendale, DC Theatre Scene”