The Great
Privation
(How to flip ten cents into a dollar)
by Nia Akilah Robinson
directed by Evren Odcikin
February 26 - March 23
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 strangely familiar mother and daughter work as counselors at what is now a sleepaway camp. Timelines collide, horrors are buried and revealed, but love never lacks.
The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) is a darkly comic play about our nation’s long practice of harming Black bodies in the name of scientific progress, our responsibility to time, and the role joy plays in living with a history we cannot change.
Creative Team
Nia Akilah Robinson
Playwright
Nia Akilah Robinson (she/her) is a playwright and actor who reps Harlem with all her might. Recent Productions include The Great Privation (Theatre503, London), which has been recently published and made available for purchase by Concord Theatricals UK & Push Party (The Hearth, NYC). In 2025, her play From 145th to 98th Street will be produced at Urbanite in Sarasota, FL. Her work has been seen and developed with Steppenwolf Theatre, The New Group, 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, and Travis Bogard Eugene O’Neill Foundation Fellow. Nia has had residencies at NYSAF and The Pocantico Center through YoungArts. Nia’s work will be featured in the 2024 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2024 The Fire This Time Festival, was featured in the 2023 SPACE JAM @ Roundabout Theatre, and the 48th Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival. She has been awarded 1st Place for the 2023 A is For Playwriting Contest, the Next Wave Initiative Lorraine Hansberry Writing Scholarship, a Miranda Family Fund Commission, NYSCA Grant (CCCADI), and a 2024 Relentless Award Semi Finalist. She is shortlisted for the 2023 Theatre503’s International Playwriting Award. 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: Yale (DGSD, MFA Playwriting Candidate) & Juilliard ‘24 (Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program). https://www.niaakilahrobinson.com/
Evren Odcikin
Director
Evren Odcikin (he/him) is a Turkish-American director, writer, and arts leader based in New York City and San Francisco. He is committed to championing historically-excluded voices in the American theater with work that is heart-centered, politically engaged, globally minded, and centers joy as resistance. Evren is proud to be the 2024-25 Artist in Residence at Golden Thread Productions and a 2025 Iris Lab Fellow with UC Santa Cruz. Recent directing: 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), Amir Nizar Zuabi’s This is Who I Am (Woolly Mammoth, PlayCo, A.R.T., Guthrie, and OSF), and workshops of Adam Ashraf Elsayigh’s ALAA: A Family Trilogy (Golden Thread) and Lauren Gunderson’s Muse of Fire (Marin Shakes). Playwriting and translation: Commissions and productions at Cal Shakes, NYU Abu Dhabi, Golden Thread, Crowded Fire, and Custom Made. In 2023, he served as the Interim Artistic Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he had been the Associate Artistic Director and Director of Artistic Programming since 2019. 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
Mariana Sanchez
Scenic Designer
Mariana Sanchez is a multidisciplinary artist, originally from Mexico. She worked as an architect for several years before earning an MFA at the Yale School of Drama, and since then she has been designing sets for theater, opera, and ballet. In 2024 she earned an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. She is based in NY and Mexico. Some of her theater credits: Square Dance, Miami City Ballet; Anatomy of a Suicide, The Atlantic Theater; Marys Seacole, Lincoln Center LTC3; The Central Park Five, Portland Opera; God of Carnage, Milwaukee Rep; Troy, Winter’s Tale, The Public Theater; Frontieres Sans Frontieres, The Bushwick Starr; Oh My Sweet Land, Play Company; Espejos: Clean, Hartford Stage; Manahatta, War, Yale Repertory Theater; Unseen, The Copper Children, Manahatta, The River Bride, All’s Well That Ends Well, Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Mojada, St Louis Repertory Theater; The Niceties, Geva Theater; Skeleton Crew, Baltimore Center Stage, among others.
Kara Harmon
Costume Designer
Kara Harmon (she/her) Off-Broadway: Watch Night, Perelman PAC; Cullud Wattah, Public Theater; Lockdown, Rattlestick Playwrights; The Niceties, Manhattan Theatre Club; Dot, Vineyard Theatre. Select Regional credits include: The Other Americans, Arena Stage; The Penelopiad, Goodman Theater; The Three Musketeers, OSF; 42nd Street, Goodspeed Musicals (CT Critics Circle Outstanding Costume Design Award); Choir Boy, Steppenwolf; Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Children’s Theatre Company; Cosi Fan Tutte, Arizona Opera; Hometown to the World, Santa Fe Opera; Shutter Sisters, Old Globe; Darlin’ Cory The Alliance Theater; Guys & Dolls, Guthrie Theater; Toni Stone, Milwaukee Rep; The Color Purple, Portland Center Stage; The Wiz!, Ford’s Theatre (Helen Hayes Award); Nina Simone: Four Women, Arena Stage; The Purists, Huntington Theatre; Barbecue, Geffen Playhouse (NAACP Award). KaraHarmonDesign.com
Marika Kent
Lighting Designer
Marika Kent (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based lighting designer. Recent credits: Ulysses, Seagull (Elevator Repair Service); Get Your Ass in the Water… (The Wooster Group); Catch as Catch Can (Playwrights Horizons); The Suffragette’s Murder (Denver Center); Sweeney Todd, Clyde’s, Choir Boy, Gem of the Ocean, School Girls, or the African Mean Girls Play (Portland Center Stage); Fences (Trinity Rep); POTUS (Arena Stage); Bernarda’s Daughters, Amani (National Black Theater). Marika teaches design at NYU’s Playwrights Horizons Theater School and is a proud member of USA Local 829. marikakent.com
Tosin Olufolabi
Sound Design
Tosin Olufolabi (she/her) is excited to be working at Soho Rep for the first time. Her sound designs include OFF-BROADWAY: Stargazers (Page 73); Dirty Laundry, Bite Me (WP Theater) REGIONAL: The Thanksgiving Play (Steppenwolf Theatre); Gloria (2018 Helen Hayes Nomination for Outstanding Sound Design for a Hayes Production); There’s Always the Hudson, Hi, Are You Single?, Incendiary, The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes (Woolly Mammoth); Ain’t No Mo (Woolly Mammoth/Baltimore Center Stage); Life is a Dream (Baltimore Center Stage); Crying on Television, Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, The Sound Inside, The Chinese Lady, Crumbs from the Table of Joy (Everyman Theater); School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play; it’s not a trip it’s a journey (Round House Theatre); Sense & Sensibility (The Village); Moses, Fires in the Mirror (Theater J); The Thanksgiving Play (Olney Theatre Center); A Wind in the Door (Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences).
Cookie Jordan
Wig and Hair Design
Cookie Jordan (she/her) Broadway: Merrily We Roll Along, Strange Loop, Camelot, The Piano Lesson, Into the Woods, Trouble In Mind, Clydes, Potus, Slave Play, Choir Boy, The Cher Show, Once On This Island, Sunday in the Park with George, In Transit, Eclipsed, Side Show, After Midnight, Fela, A View From the Bridge, South Pacific Off-Broadway: Flex, Orpheus Descending, White Girl in Danger, Girls, Fefu and Her Friends, Aint No Mo, Fairview, Toni Stone, If Pretty Hurts, The Secret Life of Bees, All The Natalie Portmans, Boseman and Lena, Fabulation, Our Lady of 121st Street, In the Blood, Daddy, Hercules. Television: Emmy nominated for make up design NBC, “The Wiz Live”. Recipient of 2019, 2020 Obie Award.
Mars Wolfe
Production Stage Manager
Mars Wolfe (they/them) Broadway: Kimberly Akimbo, Good Night, Oscar. Off-Broadway/Regional: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Bad Kreyòl, Sunset Baby, The Peculiar Patriot, The Black Clown, The New Englanders. Film/TV: MTV’s Video Music Awards, The View, VH1’s Trailblazers Honors. Education: DePaul University, Juilliard Apprentice Program
Arminda Thomas
Dramaturgy Consultant
Arminda Thomas is a dramaturg, director, and archivist. She currently serves as resident dramaturg and producing member of CLASSIX, and as a curator for New Perspectives Theatre’s On Her Shoulders reading series, where she has led explorations into the works of Beah Richards, Marita Bonner, Eulalie Spence, and Georgia Douglass Johnson. Selected credits include: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (Broadway/Brooklyn Academy of Music); Leroy and Lucy (Steppenwolf Theatre); Renaissance Mix Tape (Apollo Victoria); Trouble in Mind (Hartford Stage); Death of a Salesman (Hudson Theatre); Wedding Band (Theatre for a New Audience, Stratford Shakespeare Festival); Black Picture Show (Artists Space); and Black History Museum…According to the United States of America (HERE Arts Center). She previously served as archivist and dramaturg for Dee-Davis Enterprises, where she was an executive producer for the Grammy-awarded audiobook With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together.
Xavier Clark
Voice and Dialect Coach
Xavier Clark (he/him) is a bilingual Voice & Speech practitioner from Turkey. Coaching Credits: The Acting Company’s National Tours of Romeo and Juliet, The Three Musketeers, and Odyssey, Fish (Keen Company + Working Theatre), Orpheus Descending (TFANA), We Live in Cairo (NYTW) and more. Faculty: Stella Adler Studio of Acting and Montclair State University.
Cast
Crystal Lucas-Perry
Mother/Missy
Crystal Lucas-Perry (she/her). Broadway: Ain’t No Mo’ (Tony Award Nomination / Dorian Award Winner), 1776 (John Adams). Off-Broadway: A Sign of the Times (Audelco Award Nominee), New World Stages; A Bright Room Called Day (Antonyo Award nomination), The Public Theater; Ain’t No Mo’ (Lucille Lortel Award Winner), The Public Theater; Bull in a China Shop, Lincoln Center Theater; Little Children Dream of God, Roundabout Theater. Regional: Taming of the Shrew (Petruchio), Chicago Shakespeare Theater. TV: “Law and Order: SVU” (Aneeka Coleman); “And Just Like That…” (Angelica); “The Last O.G.” (T’era). Film: Goodnight Mommy (Sandy Liddell), Amazon Studios; Frank and Azalee Austin (Azalee, Craft Acting Award); Never Can Say Goodbye (Shayna Nadal), Brohawk Films. Education: M.F.A., Tisch Graduate Acting, New York University.
Clarissa Vickerie
Daughter/Charity
Clarissa Vickerie (she/her) is so excited to make her Off-Broadway debut! Nia’s plays have always held a special place in her heart. She will be graduating from Juilliard Drama with her MFA in May (Group 54). Her most recent credit is Push Party, also written by Nia Aikilah Robinson (produced by Theaterlab). Shout out to her Push Party girls! Immense gratitude to her parents, her family (chosen and given), Didi Rea and the whole team at D2 Management.
Holiday
Janitor/Cuffee
Holiday (he/him) is a poet, writer, recent dramaturg, and trained actor that is ecstatic to be making his Soho Rep Debut in The Great Privation by the formidable Nia Akila Robinson. He most recently starred in Adding Machine by Elmer Rice with the FEAST company in Seattle (’24). Holiday made his debut with Indy Shakespeare Company featured in Riverside by ML Roberts in Indianapolis (’24). While this is Holiday’s Off-Broadway debut he’s very familiar working in NY, performing with and in Alethea Pace’s between wave and water at B.A.A.D located in the Bronx. Holiday made his professional regional debut in James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner in ’22. Other regional credits include The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window in early ’23. Holiday is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama (’22), where he received his MFA in Acting, the Atlantic Theater Conservatory (’18), and Brookdale Community College (’15), where he grew his roots for the love of Shakespeare and all things acting. Holiday is a native to NJ and proud of it. Holiday says, “This is dedicated to my mother and father who have both at one time or another been deprived of our history, opportunities, and education, and still they have risen.”
Miles G. Jackson
John
Miles G. Jackson (he/him). Broadway: Chicken & Biscuits; Off-Broadway: Stargazers (Page 73), Pay The Writer (Signature), Three Sisters (Sheen Center), Endlings (NYTW); Regional: Your Local Theater Presents: A Christmas Carol, By Charles Dickens, Again (La Jolla), Endlings (ART), Hand to God (TheaterWorks Hartford), Typhoid Mary (Barrington), Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley (Rep of St. Louis), Mama’s Boy (George Street), Tribes (Barrington), My Name is Asher Lev (George Street), 4000 Miles (Capital Rep), Mad Forest (Williamstown). Television: “The Other Two” (HBO Max), “Hunters” (Amazon), “The Last O.G.” (TBS), “Monsterland” (Hulu), “Lisey’s Story” (Apple TV). Film: A Different Man (A24), Problemista (A24).
Supporters
Funding for The Great Privation is provided, in part, by the Laurents / Hatcher Foundation and the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation.
