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Utah Contemporary Theatre: Neglect

Thursday Nov. 11-Saturday Nov. 20 @ Rose Wagner Studio Theatre

by Scott Renshaw

November 11, 2010

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Some theater companies offer free readings. Utah Contemporary Theatre continues to offer free full productions. And for its 2010 season opener, it has taken a play that it first staged as a successful reading in February of this year—Sharyn Rothstein’s Neglect—and turned it into a full production featuring the same cast and director.

Set during the 1995 Chicago heat wave that killed more than 700 people, Neglect focuses on two characters in a predominantly black neighborhood. Rose (Yolanda Wood) is an elderly black woman who watched her once-respectable neighborhood degenerate into a crime-ridden place that leaves her afraid to leave her apartment; Joseph (Carleton Bluford) is a young, unemployed black man living in the same neighborhood. They experience the desperation and fear of that particular summer together, their lives intersecting in a way that leaves both vulnerable. Share their story and support this unique, ongoing experiment in dramatic philanthropy.

Utah Contemporary Theatre: Neglect @ Rose Wagner Studio Theatre, 138 W. 300 South, 801-886-3019, Nov. 11-20, free admission with reservation. UtahContemporaryTheatre.org