PRESS RELEASE
10/04/2023
For Immediate Release
Conyers, Ga – Conyers Rockdale Council for the Arts Inspiration Theater is pleased to present Perfect Arrangement written by Atlanta playwright Topher Payne. Performances will be Oct. 13 and 14 at 7:30 pm and Oct. 15 at 3:30 pm at the CRCA Black Box Theater. Tickets are $20 or $10 for students with valid ID and can be purchased online at https://tickets.conyersarts.org.
Inspiration Theater is a groundbreaking initiative to bring new and innovative theatrical productions to the CRCA Theater containing current, thought-provoking themes and social issues. It will feature a variety of topics and themes with the aim to create meaningful dialogue and inspire positive change in the community.
“As a playwright my job is not to shout. It’s to start a dialogue, a conversation. To make them laugh so they hopefully lean in and listen,” Payne shared in an interview with Frank J. Avella from 2015 regarding Perfect Arrangement. “There’s an experience that happens in the theatre that really only happens in houses of worship, where people come in, they sit down, and they shut up. There’s an extraordinary responsibility attached to that as the people speaking to that audience because just like in a house of worship you have the opportunity to change their minds just a little, to change their hearts just a little. And send them back out into the world better than you brought them in. That’s my job as a playwright. That’s why I write plays instead of movies. Because I believe that when you’re breathing the same air as the storyteller, something very intimate happens. If one performance of one of my shows inspires someone to make a more compassionate choice, to make a more empathetic choice — if that happens once in my entire career — then that’s time well spent.”
Inspired by the true story of the earliest stirrings of the gay rights movement, Perfect Arrangement merges madcap sitcom-style laughs with provocative drama as two closeted U.S. State Department employees struggle to maintain their cover—and their sanity—in 1950s America.
“CRCA is thrilled to partner with director Tyson White to bring Perfect Arrangement to the CRCA stage,” said Shelli Siebert, Executive Director of CRCA. “While this show is set in 1950, the message is still highly relevant to today’s world. This is exactly what Inspiration Theater is all about.”
Perfect Arrangement premiered Off Broadway at Primary Stages in New York in 2015. It has been nominated for and won numerous prestigious awards in the theatrical world.
When asked to comment, director Tyson White shared a quote from the play:
Our own government is telling people, by official order, to despise us. To find us and remove us from society. I look at my students, spot the latents every year, buffing their fingernails and cutting pictures of Monty Clift out of magazines, and I’m so afraid. If it’s this bad for us, what’s it gonna be like for them?
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About Conyers Rockdale Council for the Arts
The Conyers Rockdale Council for the Arts is the only source of high quality, diverse performing and visual art programs for the general public in Rockdale County. CRCA’s mission is to connect neighbors, cultivate artistic expression, and celebrate our community’s stories through the power of creativity and the arts. For more information on CRCA, visit https://conyersarts.org, connect on social media via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or call 770-922-3143.
For More Information:
Shelli Siebert, Executive Director
770-922-3143