Beverly Trader Austin
Playwright, Journalist, Educator
Recent Goings On
"Beverly is one of the most interesting people I have met! She has done so much and given even more. A vessel of talent and knowledge!"
Kelly Young-Silva, Founder, Words in Motion Actors Studio
For More About The Production:
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India Tyree as Phoebe in Cakewalk.
Photo by Casey Gardner.
Click below for a brief montage! Plus, click on any video title on this site to enlarge.
Cakewalk
Cakewalk, recipient of a major grant from the Yip Harburg Foundation, was Bev's new musical chosen for The Atlanta Musical Theatre Festival at Atlanta's Out Front Theatre.
The Wishing Place
Tony-winner Kenny Leon's first directing assignment, Beverly's initial professional production of The Wishing Place, was presented to sell-out houses at Atlanta's 7 Stages in September, 2023. It was produced by Peter Hardy as a winner of his 25-year-old Essential Theatre Contest and it was directed by Ellen McQueen.
Photography by Casey M. Gardner
The Wishing Place Reactions
"Beverly's family were peach growers and packers and she remembers during visits 'plucking shot out of quail, pulling up brem from a muddy lake.' By setting her play in the early 1960's Beverly has been able, adroitly, to draw upon these elemens and weave them together into a compelling story of loss, of love, and of the societal undercurrents of racial tension that reverberate to this day."
-Pat Hurley
"The play is just beautiful. I was truly so impressed and moved. Remarkable performances."
"This play is thought provoking and entertaining, and . . . soul capturing."
"A lyrical serenade into the lives of two neighboring families in mid-60's Georgia."
-Brad Rudy, Atlanta Theatre Buzz
"Well-deserved full houses! The dialogue has so much richness and poetry, and your timeless themes of family and forgiveness were explored with so many beautiful layers."
-John Mabey
At this moment... Singing Mary
Stage at Southern Appalacian Repertory Theatre, Photography by Benjamin Keith
Beverly was commisioned in the late summer of 2024 to write a script for the acclaimed, 50-year-old Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre in Mars Hill, North Carolina. Fall came. The floods came. They wiped out entire towns next to Mars Hill in Madison County-- places where this playwright's maternal grandfather was born and reared.
Ironically the play begins when Mary Sands, about to give birth to her tenth child, is making her way on foot through the devastating flood of 1916 in Madison County. Why? She's going to share her repretoire of lost ballads with the esteemed British collector Cecil Strong. Still in process, the script features a trio of magically talented women-- all play Mary at different stages in her resilient life. Each "Mary," signifigantly, in conversation with each aspect of herself. The tragic and humorous ballads of the Old Country, ones that "Singing Mary" treasured and saved, will bind her together-- just as music gives us strength at this time as we repair our own broken souls.
Cakewalk
Ben Thorpe and Amber Hamilton in Cakewalk.
Trevor Goble, David Huenergardt, India Tyree, and Ben Thorpe in Cakewalk.
Photo by Casey M. Gardner.
