Clearance by Vanessa Quinlivan, directed by John C. Wilson, will be read on Saturday, January 13th at 1 p.m. at The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre, 817 St. Paul Street, as part of The Baltimore Playwrights Festival Season 37 Play Development Readings. There will be a talk-back after the reading. Readings are free and all are welcome. Some street parking is available as well as metered parking and parking lots in the Charles Street/ St. Paul Street Corridor.
There’s been a terrorist attack, and through an improbable series of misunderstandings, Alice and Nicholas have become suspects. As they are interrogated, we explore the surreality of security theater and its parallels with the facades we often put up in our closest relationships. What begins as a dark comedy spirals into tragedy as unchecked power, irrational pride, and reactionary attitudes take their toll.
Vanessa Quinlivan moved to Baltimore in 2011 to attend graduate school. She would like to thank the Ph.D. program she attended at Johns Hopkins University for perhaps unintentionally training her to be a playwright as well as a biologist, since their standards for the comedic skits she would write for the annual department retreat were nearly as high as those for scientific publishing. Last year she moved beyond writing inside jokes for nerds and her first short play, Invisible, was produced by the Johns Hopkins University Witness Theater group as part of their Fall 2017 Showcase. She is also an actor and makeup artist for various theater organizations in Baltimore. Recent performances include Rufus Drawlings’ Smack ’em in the Snout at the 2017 Charm City Fringe Festival, Rachael Cory and Asylum with the JHU Dunbar-Baldwin-Hughes Theatre Company, and Sarina Redzinski’s You’re in Trouble and so is the Neighborhood with Tentative Digital Theatre Co.