Vernal & Sere Theatre — Idea Capital Atlanta

Artist
Erin Boswell
Vernal & Sere Theatre

Project Title
Lear by Young Jean Lee

Grant Amount
$1,500

In April 2023, Vernal & Sere Theatre will present the regional premiere of Lear by Young Jean Lee. The play is a collision between “Shakespeare’s King Lear, Sesame Street, and Young Jean Lee’s own take on the theme of dealing with a father’s mortality.” Lear pivots from Shakespeare’s story, instead turning focus away from the aging Lear and Gloucester and onto the children who cast out their fathers into the storm. Vernal & Sere Theatre’s production directed by company co-founders Erin Boswell and Erin O'Connor will be highly physical, avant-garde, and a deeply moving meditation on despair, aging, and loss. The exploration of this play will move beyond the text on the page, bringing in a kaleidoscopic weaving of our personal lives in an attempt to further explore our relationships with family, mortality, and the societal and personal consequence of exiling our elders, not to desolate wilderness in Shakespeare’s King Lear, but to nursing homes or isolated individual living without the assistance of community members or family.