By Terry Teachout
Directed by Eleanor Holdridge
Starring Craig Wallace

It’s March 1971 at the Waldorf Astoria, and Louis Armstrong has just played one of the final performances of his extraordinary career. Unwinding backstage, the legendary ‘Satchmo’ recounts the events—and regrets—that led him to a place of stature in danger of being stripped away. Helmed by Eleanor Holdridge and starring DC-favorite Craig Wallace, this one-man, three-character powerhouse play with music dives into the complicated relationships between Armstrong, his embattled Jewish manager Joe Glaser, and his fiercest competitor and critic, trumpeter Miles Davis.

By Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Jennifer L. Nelson

​What’s the power of friendship in a world where young women of color have so very little? For sixteen year-old Annie Desmond, growing up in a small city is all Galaxy phones and texts from boys. But when one of her friends proudly boasts that she’s expecting, the allure of Coach diaper bags and an infant’s constant company propels the group into a life-altering “pregnancy pact.” Torn between her allegiance to the pack, her ambitions for college, and the promise of a future with a boy named Malik, Annie must make a choice for the future she wants, even if it’s not the future she’s being pushed to pursue.

By Philip Dawkins
Directed by Natsu Onoda Power

​Meet Mama Darleena Andrews, a 67 year-old transgender woman and the inimitable etiquette instructor at “The Center,” an organization for Chicago’s homeless and LGTBQ youth. Her students are as diverse in background as they are in identity, united by a feeling of other-ness in the heart of a city that’s left them behind. But for “Mama Darlin,” triumph over poverty and prejudice begins with lacing up and fitting in—playing the part with class and with charm.

By Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm
Directed by Serge Seiden​

A timely, irreverent examination of growing up black in America by rising-star local playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm. Marquis, a book smart prep-schooler from suburban Maryland, meets Tru, a street savvy Baltimorean, in a holding cell. Tru thinks Marquis has lost his “blackness” and pens a manual entitled Being Black for Dummies, as they navigate a world of cheerleaders, Black Lives Matter, 2Pac, Nietzsche, Apollo, and Dionysus—each vying for Marquis’ future.

By Athol Fugard
Directed by Joy Zinoman
In rep with A Human Being Died That Night

​The first show in Mosaic Theater’s South Africa repertory, this landmark classic from South Africa’s most acclaimed playwright, Athol Fugard, is a harrowing fable of two brothers bound by blood and separated by color. The light-skinned Morris and his darker-skinned brother Zachariah share a one-room shack in Port Elizabeth, where their childhood memories form a bond that runs deep. But when Zachariah’s pen-pal, a white woman, announces her intention to meet him in person, it is Morris who cloaks himself in the clothes and mannerisms he learned while “passing” in white society in order to pose as his brother.

By Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela | Adapted by Nicholas Wright
Directed by Logan Vaugn

The second part of Mosaic Theater’s South Africa repertory, this tense confrontation recounts the black, African psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s gripping interrogations of Apartheid-era torturer and assassin Eugene de Kock, known by many as “Prime Evil.”

By Hanna Eady & Edward Mast
Directed by John Vreeke

​ A gripping mystery set in a run-down automobile repair shop in old Herzliya, this American premiere by Palestinian playwright Hanna Eady and Seattle-based writer with Edward Mast elegantly dramatizes the smoldering tension between a Palestinian mechanic and an attracted, conflicted Israeli Jewish woman from his past.

Four Pinteresque scenes deftly unfold a story of love, betrayal, guilt, and challenge.