PlayMakers, the professional theater in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, brings “Exit Cuckoo” to Triangle audiences as part of its PRC 2 second stage series, in which each production combines a topical play with engaging post-show discussions with the artists. Ramirez will participate after each performance. Experts in the fields of immigrant and domestic workers’ rights, topics raised by the piece, will also contribute.
Ramirez lived the real nanny diaries when a temporary job became a career by default. Then the performer in her prevailed, turning personal experience plus eye-opening stories from the globalized culture of childcare into an award-winning solo show injected with humor and heartbreak.
She tells her story interwoven with portrayals of characters including mothers, children, the head of a nanny agency and caretakers from Ireland, Trinidad and Central America.
Eve Ensler, creator of “The Vagina Monologues,” called the show “both brave and funny” and said “Ramirez gives us an inside look into the complicated, disturbing, often overlooked world of mothers, nannies and children.” The New York Times called the show “funny, sad and satisfyingly complex.”
“Exit Cuckoo” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. nightly and 2 p.m. on Jan. 16 in the Elizabeth Price Kenan Theatre in the Center for Dramatic Art on Country Club Road. Tickets are $10-$35 and may be purchased at www.playmakersrep.org or by calling (919) 962-PLAY (7529).
Sunday evening performances during each PRC² production are part of PlayMakers’ Community Nights Series, in which all tickets are $10 each, general admission.
Obie Award-winner Colman Domingo will direct. The actor-director-playwright recently starred on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning musical “Passing Strange.”
Rounding out the PRC2 series this season will be Joan Didion’s stage adaptation of her award-winning memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” (April 27-May 1.)
PlayMakers’ Mainstage season will continue with the Tony Award-winning plays “Angels in America, Parts 1 and 2” by Tony Kushner (performed in repertory Jan. 29- March 6) and the season finale, the company’s first musical in more than a decade, “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (April 6-24).
PlayMakers is based in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. The Drama League of New York has named PlayMakers one of the best regional theaters in America.
PlayMakers contact: Connie Mahan, (919) 428-1744, cmahan@email.unc.edu