the ripple, the wave that carried me home by Christina Anderson

In this world premiere commissioned by Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Tony-nominated playwright Christina Anderson brings us a poignant, transporting, and quietly subversive story of racial justice, political legacy, and family forgiveness. Janice’s childhood was steeped in her parents’ activism as they fought for the integration of public swimming pools in 1960s Kansas and taught scores of Black children to swim. But Janice later steps away from her parents’ politics and starts her own life and family far away—until she’s pressed into speaking at a ceremony honoring her father. the ripple, the wave that carried me home is a moving exploration of a family’s response to injustice and a daughter’s reckoning with her political inheritance.

BIO:

Christina Anderson is a 2022 Tony Award Nominee for Outstanding Book of the Broadway musical Paradise Square. She is a playwright, screenwriter, educator, and creative. Plays include: THE RIPPLE THE WAVE THAT CARRIED ME HOME, HOW TO CATCH CREATION, pen/man/ship, MAN IN LOVE, and GOOD GOODS. Her work has appeared at The Goodman Theatre, OSF, The Public Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Rep, and other theaters in the United States and Canada. Awards and honors include: 2021 Prince Prize, 2020 United States Artists Fellow, MacDowell Fellowship, Lily Awards Harper Lee Prize, Herb Alpert Award nomination, Barrymore Nomination, and New Dramatists Residency. Her work has appeared multiple times on the annual Kilroy’s List, an industry survey of excellent new works by female playwrights. She taught playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Rutgers University, SUNY Purchase College, and served as the interim Head of Playwriting at Brown University. Current projects: a collection of plays to be published by Tripwire Harlot Press in the Fall of 2022, Public Theatre commission for the stage adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s BARRACOON, and Ericka Huggins’s biographical screenplay.