Paradise Park Zoo

"John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?"
-- Emma Goldman, "Anarchism and other Essays

When AVLT decided on "Paradise Park Zoo" as our 2017 season closer I was thrilled and nervous. This play is huge! A moving audience, live band, large puppet, dances, cages, and actor animals. Intimidating and exciting - the best kind of adventure.

I cherished getting to explore and create this world with such fantastic collaborators. Working with artists creating what they love and what they do best was a true privilege.

I first discovered "Paradise Park Zoo" while tooling around with the filters on New Play Exchange (NPX) - "a streamlined script discovery and recommendation engine for the new play sector." I believe my filters were "experimental," "female playwright," "political," and "comedy." At the time, NPX had not been live very long and I think maybe seven plays appeared (if you do the same search now you will get over 20 pages of results). We are so lucky and grateful that Savannah Reich chose to share her scripts.

Reading "Paradise Park Zoo" was wonderful, and when the company came together to read it - at one moment we had to close the door we were laughing so loudly. One of the things I appreciated about this play is that it is a very pointed political comedy that sneaks up on you. It's a comedy about our inability to take action or initiate change. It is a painfully funny play about habit, internalized oppression, and how we have allowed ourselves to be trapped. If Available Light's motto is "Don't Wait," this play takes a deep look at the "wait."

Dispatch preview

Columbus Underground Review

Nominated for the Kilroys List in 2014.

This play features monkeys, humans, lionesses, a red panda, a Komodo dragon, and a live band.

The animals at the zoo are busy experimenting with meditation, processing their relationships, and honing their wilderness survival skills, but none of them are talking about the cages. The cages are not important.

An frisky, frolicking, fete about capitalism, the radical left, and the impossible task of imagining ourselves free. It’s one of the funniest plays we’ve read in a long time, full of joy and the best kind of theatrical impossibilities.
Keep an eye out for the elephant.