It's Thursday, and our peripatetic theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, joins us once again, today with her review of Count Down. The play by Dominique Cieri is being produced by The Strand Theater Company, the only Baltimore theater that presents works written exclusively by women artists.
Cieri describes the play as a composite of her experiences working for a New Jersey youth arts program, helping a group of at-risk teenage girls express themselves by creating an original musical stage production. Cieri says her work with the girls quickly became "a labor of love, and an odyssey into the psyche of the adolescent girl."
Count Down -- directed at the Strand by Bari Hochwald -- portrays that revelation, and, in the words of the Strand's program, "exposes the inherent dissonance between the child welfare system and the reality of the girls who have no choice but to spend their childhood and adolescence in its care."
Count Down was the recipient of the 2009 Mid Atlantic Individual Playwriting Fellowship, and Finalist for Playwrights First Award, the National Arts Club, NYC.
The Strand's production of Count Down is presented as part of the DC region's 2018 Women's Voices Theatre Festival.
Count Down continues through Sunday, March 4 at The Strand Theater, which is located at 5426 Harford Rd. Baltimore MD 21201. Ticket info at www.strand-theater.org.
