The Great Privation
(How to flip ten cents into a dollar)
by Nia Akilah Robinson
directed by Evren Odcikin
February 26 2025 - March 23 2025
You think, we carry our ancestors with us?
No. I do think there are hints they leave for us though. In our walk. Or maybe I don’t know. In the soil. I don’t know.
1832: a mother and daughter stand vigil behind the African Baptist Church in Philadelphia at the grave of a recently deceased loved one. Today, on the same grounds: another mother and daughter (alike yet not the same) work as counselors at what is now a sleep-away camp. Timelines collide, unearthing our nation’s long history of harm in the name of scientific advancement at the cost to Black bodies.
The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) is a darkly comic appraisal of the value of our bodies in death, our responsibility to time, and the role joy plays in our collective resistance.
Our first production at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons. Tickets will go on sale in December.
Creative Team
Nia Akilah Robinson
Playwright
Nia Akilah Robinson (she/her) is a playwright and actor who reps Harlem with all her might. Her work has been seen and developed with Steppenwolf Theatre, The Hearth, The New Group, Theatre503 (UK), The Ground Floor: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Great Plains Theatre Conference, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Waterwell, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Urbanite, and New Georges. She has been a MacDowell Fellow, Travis Bogard Eugene O’Neill Foundation Fellow, and a writer for PEN America and EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (short play). Nia has had residencies at NYSAF and The Pocantico Center through YoungArts. Nia’s work is featured through the 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Fire This Time Festival, and the 48th Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival. She participated in the National Black Theatre Soul Series and received the 2023 Film & TV Mentorship by Mitzi Miller. She has been awarded 1st Place for the 2023 A is For Playwriting Contest (with the Wish Collective), the Next Wave Initiative Lorraine Hansberry Writing Scholarship, a Miranda Family Fund Commission, and the NYSCA Grant (CCCADI). She is shortlisted for the 2023 Theatre503’s International Playwriting Award. She was a finalist for the Audible Commission, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Blue Ink Playwriting Award, OJAI Playwrights Conference, Jane Chambers, and The Leah Ryan Fund. She is a member or alumna of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, I-73 at Page 73, The Orchard Project NYCGreenhouse, The Wish Collective, and TheBlackHERthePen. She is proudly represented by Alex Gold at Creative Artists Agency. Education: David Geffen School of Drama at Yale- MFA Playwriting Candidate & Juilliard ‘24 (Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program)
Evren Odcikin
Director
Evren Odcikin (he/him) is a Turkish-American director, writer, and arts leader, and is the proud 2024-25 Artist-in-Residence at Golden Thread Productions. Recent directing credits include Macbeth and Mona Mansour’s unseen (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Torch Song (Marin Theatre), christopher oscar peña’s our orange sky (Profile Theatre), Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul (Northern Stage), and Amir Nizar Zuabi’s This is Who I Am (PlayCo, Woolly Mammoth, ART, Guthrie, and OSF). As a playwright and translator, he has been commissioned and produced by Cal Shakes, NYU Abu Dhabi, Golden Thread, Crowded Fire, and Custom Made. In 2023, he served as the Interim Artistic Director at OSF, where he had been the Associate Artistic Director and Director of Artistic Programming since 2019. At OSF, he was instrumental in “saving” the 2023 Season, programmed the 2024 Season, and oversaw five repertory seasons, including more than 30 productions. Evren is a founder of Maia Directors, and serves on the boards of Middle Eastern North African Theater Makers Alliance and Playwrights Foundation. Evren is honored to partner with Nia Akilah Robinson again after helping develop this play at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. odcikin.com