“A DEEPLY INTIMATE PLAY…I WATCHED TEARS FLOW, KLEENEXES EMERGE FROM POCKETS, COUPLES MOVE CLOSER TOGETHER AND FURTHER APART.” -Chicago Tribune
A surprise proposal takes an unexpected turn that upends the world of Genesis and Rashad, forcing them to confront a secret from the past. Featuring two of Atlanta’s most dynamic actors, Enoch King and Cynthia Barker, The Light is a roller coaster journey of laughter, romance and reckoning that uncovers how the power of radical love can be a healing beacon of light.
Told in real time, The Light follows the lives of Genesis and Rashad, an African-American couple after a surprise gift threatens the very foundation of their relationship. When Rashad presents Genesis with concert tickets for their two-year dating anniversary, the pair is forced to confront secrets from their pasts that puts them on opposing sides and sends them on a journey of love and self-discovery.
“The Light is a present-day love story complicated by the many things that go unsaid,” explains co-director Marguerite Hannah, Horizon’s Associate Artistic Producer. “The characters explore many questions about love universally and the Black community in specific. They unearth the questions we have been taught not to ask: Is surviving our past enough?
“Genesis and Rashad are each doing their best in a relationship based on love and mutual respect, but together they will find that actively making an effort to love and understand each other, including their pasts, with the cultural spotlight of the #MeToo Movement will lead to a deeper level of honesty and commitment that will change them both forever.”
CONTENT ADVISORY: While this play focuses on deep love and meaningful relationships, there is frank conversation on the topics of suppressed trauma and sexual violence.
“I write to point toward hope. I want my work to be a neon sign in the darkness: This way out. This way to hope.”
Playwright Loy Webb
MORE FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE:
“Webb’s play is at once a love story and a cautionary tale. “The Light” is only about 80 minutes long, penned so the action takes place in real time, and much of the stage time is spent exploring this couple at the apex of their loving relationship..The love that populates The Light — and there is much in evidence — is dealing with the pain of the past. And one of the central questions of the play is how a couple gets beyond what has occurred, if that is even possible at all. What is impressive about the writing is how Webb keeps intensifying both the stakes and seriousness of the relationship even as she builds the threat of that which is tearing it apart. You believe this pair of actors is playing people deeply in love, even as you see the growing chasm. And thus you feel deeply for both of them. And, perhaps, for yourself. Which gives the play great hope, actually.
Webb was inspired by what allegedly took place in the past of Nate Parker, the hugely talented director of the film “Birth of a Nation,” and that led her to this cutting exploration of men who talk and work woke, so to speak, but whose personal conduct tells another story. But let me say again: This is not a play about a woman and a man whose behavior has been reprehensible, but a very current play about a good woman and a good man, dealing with how the revealed horrors of the world, now make it impossible for lovers to pull the blinds.”
Performance Dates
MARCH 19-APRIL 17, 2022
Press Opening: March 25, 2022
Show Times
Wednesday – Friday at 8:00 PM
Saturday at 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM
Sunday at 5:00 PM
General Admission
Tickets start at $30 on Wednesdays & Thursdays, and $35 on weekends.
Bring your neighbors!
Group pricing is available for parties of 10+. Groups of 10-24 receive $3 off the general admission ticket price. Groups of 25+ receive $5 off the general admission ticket price. Call 404.523.1477 x100 or e-mail groups@horizontheatre.com for more information.
Ticket prices are subject to change. Buy early for best pricing. Internet convenience fee added to all online orders. No refunds, exchanges, or late seating. Cannot combine discount offers.
Creative Team
Directed by MARGUERITE HANNAH & LYDIA FORT
Scenic Design MORIAH CURLEY-CLAY AND ISABEL CURLEY-CLAY
Costume Design DR. L. NYROBI MOSS
Lighting Design MARY PARKER
Sound Design JEREMIAH DAVISON & CHRISTOPHER LANE
Original Music LEX & Multiband Studios
Stage Manager JULIANNA M. LEE*
Cast
CYNTHIA D. BARKER* (Genesis) Regional: Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous (Hartford Stage) Uprising (Metro Stage); Paradise Blue, for colored girls, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Black Nativity (True Colors Theatre); The Royale (Theatrical Outfit); The Mountaintop (Aurora Theatre); Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Troy Davis Project, Women+War (Synchronicity Theatre); Citizens Market, How To Use A Knife, Uprising, Elemeno Pea, Third Country , Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery (Horizon Theatre); Macbeth (Georgia Shakespeare); Flyin’ West (Theatre in the Square); A Raisin in the Sun, Lakebottom Proper, Hamlet (Springer Opera House); A Christmas Carol, Honk! The Musical (Alliance Theatre). Film/ TV: The Game (Paramount TV) Rectify (Sundance TV), Ir/Reconcilable (HBO), Tyler Perry’s House of Payne (TBS). Here’s to little Black girls and Black women navigating the intersection of race and gender: I stand with you in love, laughter and so much light.
ENOCH KING* (Rashad) has been part of Horizon for nearly two decades, with credits including Sweet Water Taste, Constellations, Uprising, The Waffle Palace, and many years of The Santaland Diaries. He is a Georgia native and began his career path at Tri-Cities High School Visual and Performing Arts and the critically-acclaimed Freddie Hendricks Youth Ensemble of Atlanta. Enoch has been blessed with the opportunity to work with Horizon Theatre, Georgia Shakespeare Festival, Aurora Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, True Colors Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Jewish Theater of the South, and Dad’s Garage. He has been seen recently in Toni Stone (Alliance Theatre/Milwaukee Rep), The Bluest Eye (Synchronicity Theatre), Skeleton Crew (True Colors Theatre, American Stage-FL), The Christians (Actor’s Express), and much more.
*Member of Actors Equity Association
Playwright
LOY A. WEBB is a Chicago-born playwright, attorney, and theatre journalist. Her plays include The Light (MCC Theater 2018/2019, Outer Critics Circle nomination for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play; The New Colony, 2017/2018, Joseph Jefferson Award), and His Shadow (16th Street Theater 2019/2020). She was an inaugural Tutterow Fellow at Chicago Dramatists. She is a member of the Association of Women of Journalist-Chicago and a contributing theater critic for Newcity. Loy holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a J.D. from The John Marshall Law School. She is currently a writer on the AMC television series NOS4A2. Her work has been featured at Black Ensemble Theatre as a part of their Black Playwrights Initiative Program, American Theater Company (Big Shoulders Festival 2014), 20 Percent Theatre Company Chicago (Snapshots Festival 2014 and 2015), University of North Dakota, GI60 International One Minute Play Festival (2015), Modern-Day Griot Theatre Company New York and the Black Lives, Black Words International Project. Her short play, I AM a Woman is featured in the hip-hop anthology Wish to Live: The Hip-hop Feminism Pedagogy Reader.
Press & Reviews
- WABE Interview: Secrets Revealed and Love Tested in Horizon Theatre’s “The Light”
- AJC REVIEW: Performances glow in Horizon’s topical “The Light”
- ArtsATL REVIEW: Political, personal differences come into view in Horizon’s “The Light”
- Interview with the Playwright – “The Light is the #MeToo Play that everyone needs to see – Creator Loy Webb explains why”
- Interview with the Playwright – “Who Are the Best People to Tell This Story”
- Interview with the Playwright – “Playwright Loy A. Webb Brings The Light to Where #MeToo, #MuteRKelly and #BlackLivesMatter Converge”
Media
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