Conceived and created by California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) undergraduate students, EPIC: #ethnocentricCRAP, a University Player’s upcoming performance, will analyze how discrimination affects students’ lives, as well as the Long Beach community as a whole.
Director Anna Steers expects the show, which plays November 20 through December 6, to provoke audiences.
“It is more than a play, it is a movement centered on creating awareness of ethnocentrism,” Steers said in a statement. “This movement is an exploration of the human psyche, and an investigation into social psychology, showing how prejudice, fear, distrust, and conflict take hold when stress is introduced.”
As an upper-division class last fall, students conducted social experiments on campus and moderated “story-sharing” circles to create content for the final production. The show was devised in response to recent hate crimes and racial attacks nationwide, according to the release, while its goal is to look at how prejudices and what we consider to be foreign or the other are shaped by our own experiences.
“EPIC: #ethnocentricCRAP speaks up against the silent observer and apathy, asking the difficult, necessary questions that are intrinsic tenets of this ancient dialogue,” said Steers in a statement. She said EPIC: #ethnocentricCRAP’s script is a “living document,” constantly in revision. She and the cast will continue to work on the script by adding new stories to create the final draft.
Steers is now in her sixth year in the CSULB Theatre Arts Department. She has led teaching service projects in Cambodia and has developed original performance art with at-risk youth at Brava Theatre in San Francisco. Anna’s EPIC class has collaborated with local Long Beach organizations such as the VA Hospital, Boys and Girls Clubs, Women to Women Shelter, the Flossie Lewis Center and Arts and Services for the Disabled.She holds a Shakespeare intensive certificate from Oxford University, a BA in Performing Arts and Social Justice from University of San Francisco and a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from CSULB, according to the release.
EPIC: #ethnocentricCRAP opens Friday, November 20, and closes on Sunday, December 9. There will be no performances during CSULB Fall Break, November 22 through November 30. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8:00PM with Saturday matinees at 2:00PM on November 21 and December 5. There will be a preview performance on Thursday, November 19 at 8:00PM.
Tickets are $17 for general admission and $14 for seniors and students (with valid ID). Parking is available next to the theater for $5. For tickets and information, please call 562.985.5526 or click here.
Images courtesy of University Players.
This production will take place at the Studio Theatre on the CSULB Campus, accessible via West Campus Drive. CSULB is located at 1250 Bellflower Boulevard.
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