It's hard to believe that last month we celebrated one year of Peregrine Theatre Company! If you're joining us for the first time: welcome! You're coming into our world at an incredible moment as we open the first production in our inaugural season, PILLOW FORTRESS by the amazing Aysha Zackria! Ever since we read this firecracker of a play last summer, we knew that it was the perfect play to open our first season. We love the world that Aysha creates where pillow forts are a great way to pass the time, no pranks are off limits, and there's always one more hit of weed in a bowl of ash. We're still obsessing over the characters who are finding their way in the world and learning how to stick to their beliefs just like us.

This process hasn't been easy. It turns out that "making theatre out of thin air" requires more trust, levelheadedness, and gratitude than any sort of magic. We couldn't have done it without Jaida Gillespie, the fantastic director of this production whose personality and care echoes throughout the direction. We owe a debt of gratitude to this whole team who has joined us in our biggest production yet and taught us so much about what it means to make mistakes, fall on our asses, and get up again. And of course we wouldn't be here without the support of our unstoppable core team. Thank you Amelia, Emma, Hannah, and Seth for being the ones to hold us together!

If you've been with us since last February: thank you. Thank you thank you thank you for making it possible for us to do this work like our lives depend on it, because in part, we know our lives DO depend on our ability to create art independently and push our limits without fear of failure. As long as you'll be here, we'll be here, chasing this bizarre and exhilarating dream as fast as we can. Thank you for joining us for PILLOW FORTRESS!

Love, 

Erica and Nate

Co-Founders, Co-Artistic Directors

Peregrine Theatre Company

When you walk into this world, you're greeted with a cozy college living room, and three characters we all know from our own lives. What we don't know - how the alert of an escaped prisoner will impact not only their safety, but also their values.

This process began as a workshop in December. As a group we dove deep into what these circumstances mean to us, probing the details and motivations of each character and overall arc of the story. We ultimately saw these characters are archetypes from our own lives, and they should reflect the conversations we have (in small rooms that no one else hears). Entering the production, I knew themes of moral relativism and intersectional feminism needed to be explored. Along with what the playwright valued to be seen and how my experience as a young black queer woman could shape this show into its first full production.

The creation of Pillow Fortress, by Aysha Zackria, is honest, intricate, and lively. I hope this story tugs on your morals, brings laughter, and gives you perspective. This piece does not have one ending, but invites a conversation about what parts of yourself you see in these characters and what parts of the system you feel subjected to and need to fight for. Our own intersections can and will lead us to each other, and it's up to us to find moments of connection and compromise to move forward and love on one another.

A major thank you to the cast, production and Peregrine Theatre for your dedication to this show and exploration of what it means to put on new work!

After ten long weeks away from home, I fumble through Union Station's thick humidity with my bags. The same birds circling the station. The same stale smell of McDonald's coffee. But now, federal troops stood stationed at the nexus of movement in our nation's capital. Men and women dressed in field green, watching, waiting, chasing. Not just district police, but Federal presence. An escalation of control. I had to smoke my first jay back a few steps from my normal spot, aware of new rules, and new fears.

We exist in a police state - a nation where surveillance, mobility control, and punishment from the deviation of norms shape daily life.

From slave patrols to fugitive slave laws and Jim Crow, to the war on drugs and mass incarceration, federal attempts to control Black people, people of color, immigrants is not new. In Never Caught, Erica Armstrong Dunbar traces fugitive slave pursuit at this nation's founding. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander names mass incarceration as racial social control and stripping of rights. Scholars, organizers, and activists have continued conversation around state oppression on people revealing ideologies that promote abolition, mutual aid, or for some, further militarization or neutrality.

In the short story "Unwritten Novel", Virginia Woolf writes, "The eyes of others are our prisons; their thoughts our cages." Aysha Zackria encountered Woolf's work including A Room of One's Own alongside Alexander's The New Jim Crow in high school. With those two works in conversation, we ask: what are the cages -psychologically and structurally-that limit our agency, rights, and ability to connect with one another.

From that conversation, workshops, and Zackria's vibrant wit and humor emerges Pillow Fortress. Three college students gather to present on Woolf while negotiating identity, political ideology, fear, and intimacy. How do differing ideologies create rifts in relationships? Whose fear is most salient? What do we construct around us to feel safe in the face of oppression? Is it a fortress or a cage?

With care,

Fatima Dyfan  

DURATION:

The play will be approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.

CELL PHONES:

We kindly ask you to turn off or silence any noise-making devices for the duration of the performance. Recording and photography during the performance are strictly prohibited.

CONTENT ADVISORY:

This production includes strong language, substance use, mentions of death, and depictions of panic attacks and violence, including by the police.

WANT TO GET INVOLVED?

We are always looking to work with eager early-career professionals! Email us at peregrinetheatrecompany@gmail.com!

Stay tuned for our production of UBU ROI by Alfred Jarry, translated by Beverly Keith, this Fall, directed by Peregrine's own Seth Drenning!

Co-Artisitic Directors: Erica Bass and Nate Huff

Director of Communications: Hannah Chester

Director of Production: Seth Drenning

Director of Marketing: Amelia Emory

Director of Events and Audience Services: Emma Magner

Graphic Designer: Ella Speer