The Great Privation: How to flip ten cents into a dollar is about Grave Robbing: Grave Robbing during the early 1800’s. Grave Robbing during the Cholera outbreak. Grave Robbing in Pennsylvania. Robbing of Black bodies for medical research. Black bodies that were commodified even after death. Black bodies that never got their rest.
2023 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award Finalist The Great Privation: How to flip ten cents into a dollar is a stunning, profound play exploring the historical disruption of black bodies at rest, where timelines and generations collide, and secrets and lives become buried and revealed. Nia Akilah Robinson’s beautiful and haunting debut play captures humour and joy amongst the darkest moments, and asks us all to reflect deeply on
who we once might have been.
Nia Akilah Robinson is a playwright and actor who reps Harlem with all her might. Her work has been developed through residencies, fellowships, commissions, and development with a number of prestigious companies and festivals in the US (full biography in credits). Director Kalungi Ssebandeke is Theatre503’s Carne Associate Director. His credits include Meetings (Orange Tree) for which he won the 2023 JMK Directing Award. Zena Collins (whose producing credits include J’Ouvert) is Executive Producer and Clarisse Makundul Productions is Associate Producer.
The Great Privation: How to flip ten cents into a dollar was selected from 1466 scripts as one of five finalists for the 2023 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award and its premiere follows the success of the recent sold-out and extended production of the Award’s winner A Woman Walks Into a Bank by Roxy Cook (currently nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize). Theatre503 is delighted to confirm that the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award will return for 2024/5, with submissions opening on 1st June 2024.
