Love

Straight from the 2019 Ojai Playwrights Conference comes Love, a play that faces the damaging fallout of sexual encounters in the workplace. By award-winning playwright Kate Cortesi, Love draws and redraws the unsteady lines of acceptable professional behavior, and searches the complicated grey area of power dynamics related to gender and consent. Written and performed in a time when hashtags like #metoo and #believewomen exemplify a changing social dynamic, Love dares to examine the uncertainties beyond the slogans. Both performances will be followed by a discussion of the play’s themes with the playwright, facilitated by a panel of local academics and social advocates.

Presented by the UCSB Initiative for New and Reimagined Work and Center Stage Theater, this staged reading (October 5th and 6th) precedes the play’s world premiere at Marin Theater Company in March 2020. Love is the inaugural project from the newly formed UCSB Initiative for New and Reimagined Work, a production entity committed to bringing new plays to the community and supporting the upcoming generation of dramatic artists. Love is directed by Maggie Mixsell and features Joe Spano, Faline England, Diahnna Nicole Baxter, Brian Harwell, Ivy Vahanian, Dan Gunther, Lisa Gates, and Verenice Zuniga.