First Place: Griswold

by Angela J. Davis

Synopsis: On the eve of the sexual revolution, a bold and iconoclastic woman in her sixties will engineer her own criminal arrest, resulting in the landmark Supreme Court case, Griswold v. Connecticut, which strikes down laws criminalizing birth control, establishes a right of sexual privacy, and directly paves the way for other guarantees of liberty, including, on the 50th anniversary of the Griswold case, the right of same-sex couples to marry. Fusing magic realism and traditional docudrama, this play mines the spirit and extraordinary events leading to establishment of the right of sexual privacy and its essential link to personal dignity.

Cast and Creative

  • Angela J. Davis

    Playwright

    Angela J. Davis is the author of The Spanish Prayer Book (The Road Theatre Company 2019-20 season; L.A. Times Best Bet (“a literate meditation on the boundaries of art and social responsibility”), AGATHE (2020 New American Voices Award - The Landing Theatre, 2021 SETC Getchell Award for Outstanding Full-Length Play, 2021 Jane Chambers Award Finalist and Honoree), Clara and Serra and The Talking Bear (commissioned in 2020 by Antaeus Theatre Company), and Griswold (2021 Arts & Letters Prize Finalist and National Women’s Theatre Festival Official Selection) among other plays.

    Recent work presented/forthcoming at Playhouse on the Square, Playhouse Creatures (NYC) The Landing Theatre, Antaeus Theatre Company, Sohaya Visions (London), Chameleon Theatre Circle, HRC Showcase, The Road Theatre Company, The Blank Theatre, Theatre In the Raw (Vancouver), The Dayton Playhouse, Viterbo, and elsewhere.

    The Recipient of multiple playwriting honors, she’s also authored poetry and prose pieces appearing in The Antioch Review, Art/Life, and a University of Iowa Press anthology and was one of sixteen writers selected as Literary Hosts for the 2018 PEN America LitFest. Degrees from Stanford and UCLA; member of Dramatists Guild, PEN America, and the Antaeus Theatre Company Playwrights Lab.

  • karen Eilbacher

    Actor One

    LeT Us PLay.

    Theater: Fun Home (Broadway National Tour), She Like Girls (GLAAD Awards), Wolf in the River (Adam Rapp Dir), Waafrika123 (National Queer Theater); Television: Dietland (AMC), Parallels (LA WebFest); Film: Curfew (Academy Award), Lady Liberty (TribecaTV premiere), PROGRAM (NYFF). Than/<:wĒn Yous

  • Cedric Lamar

    Actor Two

    Cedric Lamar is an actor, singer-songwriter, and composer who spent 6 seasons in the acting company of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where he was in many productions including Mother Road, Hamlet, Oklahoma, Love’s Labour Lost, Pericles, The Wiz, and composed the music for the 2019 production of Alice in Wonderland. Cedric is also the founder of the custom songwriting service, If My Heart Could Sing. ifmyheartcouldsing.com cedriclamar.com

  • Haviland Morris

    Estelle Griswold

    Broadway: Ring Round the Moon, Arcadia, Tartuffe: Born Again. Off-Broadway: What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad (Hunter Theater Project), The Michaels (Public), Nickolai and the Others (LCT), Rodney’s Wife, The Uneasy Chair (Playwrights), Aristocrats (MTC). Regional: Age of Innocence (McCarter, Hartford), Bad Dates (Long Wharf,), Rodney’s Wife (Williamstown) Film: Burning Blue, Nor’easter, Jack &amp; Diane, Fighting Fish, Adam, The Baxter, Home Alone 3, Gremlins 2, A Shock to the System, Who’s That Girl, Sixteen Candles.