(Kerry Reid’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 10/17.)
As befits a company dedicated to stories of diaspora, Silk Road Rising (formerly Silk Road Theatre Project) always seems to shine brightest with plays that traverse years and continents, yet still find their greatest strength and solace in the twisted DNA of family connections.
If you saw Silk Road Rising's magnificent production of Wajdi Mouawad's "Scorched" a couple of
years ago, you might uncover some similarities with Adriana Sevahn Nichols' "Night Over Erzinga." Both move backward and forward in time to tell a sorrowful story rooted in war and atrocity, and both require a fluid ensemble in which actors play multiple related characters, such as a young mother in an earlier time and that same mother's grown daughter later on.