![NJPAC Stage Exchange Closes Its Season With "Back To The Real"](https://www.newjerseystage.com/events2017/BackToTheReal.jpg "NJPAC Stage Exchange Closes Its Season With "Back To The Real"")
(NEWARK, NJ) -- Back to the Real, a play part of NJPAC Stage Exchange and co-commissioned with Crossroads Theatre Company, will have a staged reading in the Chase Room at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) on Friday, June 23 at 7:00pm. Written by Pia Wilson, the play is about a brother and sister who must navigate the potholes along the way to becoming actual adults. It explores race, colorism within the African-American community, sexism, and anti-LGBTQ sentiment. How are the brother and sister going to (or not going to) stand up for each other? Admission is $5.
The reading of Back to the Real concludes the third season of the Stage Exchange, presented by NJPAC in collaboration with the New Jersey Theatre Alliance. Cutting-edge play development meets insightful community dialogue at the Stage Exchange, a collaboration of three professional New Jersey theaters and a talented trio of Garden State playwrights. Following readings and Q&As related to each work at the Stage Exchange, world premiere productions are staged by each dramatist’s partner theater. Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick is the partner theater for Back to the Real.
Pia Wilson is a 2017 resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Process Space program on Governor's Island, 2015 Sundance fellow, and a recipient of the 2014 Sarah Verdone Writing Award. She is a 2012-2013 resident with LMCC's Workspace program, a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, and a 2009 playwriting fellow with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her play Generation T was produced at Adelphi University in 2014, and her full-length play, The Flower Thief, was co-produced in 2012 by Horse Trade Theater Group and The Fire This Time play festival. Her full-length drama, Red Rooster, was part of the Future Classics reading series as well as the Emerging Writers Spotlight Series at The Public Theater in 2009. Her play All the Pretty Girls was featured in The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2009 Writer/Director Forum.
Founded in 1978 by Ricardo Khan and L. Kenneth Richardson, Crossroads Theatre Company embraces the vision that African-American theater is intended for a broad-based, diverse audience. As a major force in the development of new ideas and the introduction of formerly marginalized writers, Crossroads produces works that enrich and diversify the representation of African American culture on the American stage. Crossroads was the winner of the 1999 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater in the United States.
Generous support for Stage Exchange is provided by the Geraldine Dodge Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
New Jersey Theatre Alliance unites, promotes, strengthens, and cultivates New Jersey's professional theatres. We advance the theatre community by developing innovative, collaborative, and engaging programs and services for member theatres and their diverse audiences.
NJPAC, located at One Center Street in Newark, NJ, is among the largest performing arts centers in the United States and is the artistic, cultural, educational and civic center of New Jersey - where great performances and events enhance and transform lives every day. NJPAC brings diverse communities together, providing access to all and showcasing the state's and the world's best artists while acting as a leading catalyst in the revitalization of its home city. Through its extensive Arts Education programs, NJPAC is shaping the next generation of artists and arts enthusiasts.
