NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Lucy Pollak
[email protected] (818) 887-1499 (for media only)
All-star cast records Dominique Morisseau’s compelling
‘Pipeline’ for L.A. Theatre Works
Available for digital download March 18
LOS ANGLES (March 8, 2022) — L.A. Theatre Works, the world’s leading producer of audio theater, is honored to add Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau to its extensive collection of state-of-the-art audio theater, the largest library of its kind in the world.
Larry Powell (writer/creator of two-time Emmy nominated series The Gaze) directs a stellar cast including Sophina Brown (Showtime’s Twenties), Eugene Byrd (Secrets of Sulphur Springs, Bones), Demetrius Grosse (Swagger, The Rookie), Sharon Lawrence (Rebel, NYPD Blue), X Mayo (NBC’s American Auto, The Daily Show), Uyoata Udi (Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga) and Karen Malina White (The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, Malcolm and Eddie).
Pipeline is Morisseau’s strikingly powerful play about a mother’s hopes for her son and their clash with an educational system that seems to be rigged against him.
Nya, a dedicated teacher at an inner-city school, is desperate to give her only son opportunities that her own public high school students will never have. When a controversial incident at his private school threatens to get Omari expelled, Nya must confront his rage and her own fight to give her son a future without turning her back on their community.
According to The New York Times, “The play’s title refers to the ‘school-to-prison pipeline,’ wherein underprivileged students are channeled directly from the public education system into American penal institutions.” In the paper’s review of the 2017 world premiere production at New York City’s Lincoln Center Theatre, Ben Brantley wrote that Pipeline “confirms [Morisseau’s] reputation as a playwright of piercing eloquence.”
Dominique Morisseau is the author of The Detroit Project (A 3-Play Cycle) which includes the following plays: Skeleton Crew (Atlantic Theater Company, currently on Broadway), Paradise Blue (Signature Theatre), and Detroit ’67 (Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem and NBT). Additional plays include: Sunset Baby (LAByrinth Theatre); Blood at the Root (National Black Theatre) and Follow Me To Nellie’s (Premiere Stages). She is also the TONY nominated book writer of the Broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations (Imperial Theatre). Dominique is alumna of The Public Theater Emerging Writer’s Group, Women’s Project Lab, and Lark Playwrights Workshop and has developed work at Sundance Lab, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Eugene O’Neil Playwrights Conference. She most recently served three seasons as co-producer on the Showtime series Shameless. Additional awards include: Spirit of Detroit Award, PoNY Fellowship, Sky-Cooper Prize, TEER Trailblazer Award, Steinberg Playwright Award, Audelco Awards, NBFT August Wilson Playwriting Award, Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, two OBIE Awards, Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, Variety’s Women of Impact for 2017-18 and a recent MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow.
L.A. Theatre Works stands apart in its approach to making great theater widely accessible and affordable, bringing plays into homes and classrooms of millions of theater lovers, teachers and students each year. Its catalog of nearly 600 recorded plays is the largest archive of its kind in the world, featuring classics by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and Lillian Hellman, as well as new works by Lynn Nottage, Charlayne Woodard, Jeanne Sakata and Herbert Siguenza — to name a few. The company’s radio theater series broadcasts weekly on public radio stations across the U.S. and daily in China on the Radio Beijing Network.
According to AudioFile magazine, “L.A. Theatre Works sets the gold standard for fine audio theater recordings.” The Philadelphia Inquirer calls L.A. Theatre Works “a national theatrical treasure.”
The L.A. Theatre Works audio recording of Pipeline will be available for digital download beginning March 18; the recording is currently available for pre-order for $20 at latw.org/title/Pipeline.
# # #