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Julian Rozzell Jr.

Specimen

May 25, 2026

Visually, "Specimen" resembles the fever dream of a junk dealer raised on 1970s science fiction. We anxiously anticipate the arrival of Robot B-9 from" Lost in Space" shouting “Danger, Will Robinson!,” but that level of comfort zone never materializes…wink, wink. The set, designed collaboratively by Sharp, McCormick, and Mancinelli, is a glorious landfill of keyboards, monitors, knobs, exposed wiring, and industrial debris. It evokes a radical version of the control room from any low budget sci-fi film of the 70s, as though salvaged after decades drifting through radioactive space. David Zeffren’s lighting bathes the production in bruised blues and flashing emergency reds, transforming the basement theater into a claustrophobic purgatory of technological exhaustion. The entire environment feels one electrical surge away from extinction. [more]

Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)

November 4, 2014

Underlying all of the storytelling is the archetype of Homer's Odyssey, the story of another journey in another time of war. Many of the characters (Penny, Ulysses, Homer, Odyssey pronounced "Odd-see") take their names from this work. What may be most unusual about this first cycle of plays is that it is one of the few stage works to tell the story of the Civil War entirely from the point of view of African American slaves. [more]