The Magnolia Ballet runs Mar 17 -Apr 10

INDIANAPOLIS, — The Phoenix Theatre presents The Magnolia Ballet by Terry Guest, March 17 – April 10, 2022. Terry Guest is an award-winning Playwright, Actor, Producer, Poet and Teaching Artist based in Chicago, IL. As an actor Guest has worked at regional theaters around the country including Steppenwolf, Goodman Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Actors Express, and others. Guest’s play At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen was the recipient of the 2018 Out Front Theatre Spectrum Series Grant and had its world premiere in Chicago at The Story Theatre.

Directed by Mikael Burke. Mikael serves as the Associate Artistic Director for About Face Theatre in Chicago, as well as with First Floor Theater. He’s the Head of the Directing Concentration for the Summer Training Program of The Theatre School at DePaul University. Locally Burke has directed at IRT, No Exit Performance, and is slated to direct RICKY 3 - A HIP HOP SHAKESPEARE RICHARD III with Indianapolis Shakespeare Company this summer.

The Magnolia Ballet stars Isaiah Moore*, Daniel Martin*, Eddie Dean*, and Andrew Martin. The play is a Southern Gothic fable about a Queer Black boy, his father and the ghosts that live in the walls of their old family home. Spanning 400 years, the show explores the complex relationships between multiple generations of Black and White people living in the state of Georgia.

The Magnolia Ballet is the 93rd World Premiere produced by Phoenix Theatre. The Phoenix Theatre is a Core Member of the National New Play Network, an alliance of professional theatres that collaborates in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays. Phoenix joins NNPN partner theaters, Alleyway Theatre (New York) and Williamston Theatre (Michigan) in producing this National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere.

“As a queer Black man raised in the American south, this play is hugely important to me. No young person should ever be made to feel the way I did, like they are wrong simply for existing.

This play forces all of us to reckon with the legacies of toxic masculinity and racism in this country. It’s a play that demands that we wrestle with the ghosts of our prejudices and recognize where the rules we once set in order to survive have become the killers of a new generation.” –Director Mikael Burke

The Magnolia Ballet by Terry Guest is sponsored by C.H. Douglas & Gray Wealth Management.

Tickets here

Contact the Box Office by email at [email protected], or by phone at 317-635-7529.