Mark Spina from "The Theater Project" addresses Cranford Rotary

The Theater Project, a professional theater troop that currently stages productions at the Union County College, will soon need to find a new home. They are looking for a location that can accommodate between 75 and 200 people.

Begun in 1994, THE THEATER PROJECT, is known for its color-blind casting policy and provocative “actor’s view theater” seating" -- the audience is on-stage with the actors, “where the action is.”

A production of The African Company Presents  Richard III, by Carlyle Brown is scheduled to run from April 28th to May 15th. 

Based on a true story, 134 years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, 108 years before Martin Luther King, Jr was born, and 6 years before enslavement of blacks fully ended in New York state, a theater company of free black actors was passionately performing Shakespearean adaptations and original works in front of packed houses in 1821 Manhattan. The African Company, as they were known, then dared to open their production of Richard III on the same night and right next door to another Richard III production by New York City's leading theater of the time starring English tragedian Junius Brutus Booth. The African Company's refusal to close down and capitulate to the pressure of their white competitors is depicted in this provocative and empowering drama.

Past productions have included:

2011	Astonishment
2010	Manuscript By Paul Grellong Why Torture Wrong .... and the  People Who Love Them Crowns
2009	The Smell of the Kill Psycho Beach Party Ruby Sunrise
2008	Fully Committed Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage Defying Gravity
2007	Omnium Gatherum Valhalla It's a Wonderful Life Open Admissions
2006	The Road to Mecca The Lady in Question The Skin of Our Teeth
2005	Three Tall Women Jackie, An American Life Music from a Sparkling Planet
2004	• Top Girls • Betty's Summer Vacation • The Mystery of Irma Vep
2003	• Having Our Say • A Wilde Night in the Rockies • Pterodactyls
2002	• All in the Timing • The Food Chain • Artist Descending a Staircase
2001	• The Dining Room • Empty Plate at the Café du Grande Boueff • How I Learned to Drive
2000	• The Golden Fleece & The Problem • Defying Gravity • What I Did Last Summer
1999	• The Little Playwright • The Food Chain
1998	• A Chekhov Kaliedoscope • The Dining Room
1997	• For Tiger Lilies Out of Season • The Great Illusion: Soviet Theater • A Durang Evening • The Waiting Room
1996	• The Actor's Nightmare, Inc.     1. Desire, Desire, Desire     2. For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls • Three One Acts:     1. The Golden Fleece     2. Wanda in the Living Room     3. Sightings
1995	• Open Admissions • Beyond Therapy • Oleanna
1994	• Six Degrees of Separation