About this Event
Join us for a free reading of Scott R. Sheppard’s Performance Department, directed by Annie Tippe.
Wednesday, June 10 at 7pm and Thursday, June 11 at 3pm
ART/NY Spaces @ 520
520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10018
Because of our supporters, Page 73's readings are offered at no charge to the public. Reservations are required – and fill up quickly! Click below to reserve your seats.
About the Play
Performance Department is a satirical horror about a struggling liberal arts college that is swept into a pageantry of virtue signaling around one black student’s incendiary thesis project. While the Development Office launches quixotic fundraising ploys to meet Annual Fund goals, the professors strategize to discreetly sabotage their “problem student.” As despair grows about whether the university has any lasting power in today's America, a terrifying affliction begins to spread from the thesis project. Soon new monsters stalk the grounds on Alumni Weekend. Will this two-hundred year old institution be saved, or will the sins from its past rise up from within and usher it towards a grisly demise?
About the Playwright
Scott R. Sheppard (he/him) is a playwright, performer, and founding Co-artistic Director of theater company Lightning Rod Special. He is the co-creator and performer of Underground Railroad Game (Ars Nova), which won an Obie Award for Best New American Theatre Work (2017), an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, an Edinburgh Stage Award, and was named one of the 25 best plays of the past 25 years by The New York Times. Sheppard was a 2024 finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and semifinalist for the 2024 Terrence McNally Award with Performance Department. He was a lead writer/performer in Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment (Best Theater of 2023 in The New Yorker and Best of 2019 in Time Out New York and New York Magazine, The New York Times Critics’ Pick). Other credits include: co-writer of Lions (Steinberg/ATCA New Play Finalist), Nosejob (2024 semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference) and lead writer/performer of SPEECH with Shayok Misha Chowdhury, writer of Blood Meal (The New York Times Critics’ Pick) and Topside with Theater in Quarantine. Sheppard graduated from The Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training and has collaborated on several works with Pig Iron Theatre Company. Sheppard attends The Juilliard School for playwriting and is a Creative Capital Award Winner, a Next Forever commissioned artist, an Independence Foundation Fellow, a BRIClab Resident, and a 2021–23 member of Page 73’s I-73 Writers Group. He also runs a wedding venue with his wife and friends in the Catskills called Adena Orchard.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
520 8th Ave 3rd floor, 520 8th Avenue, New York, United States
USD 0.00
