Dance Nation

Written By Clare Barron
Directed By Tawny Stephens

April 25-May 11, 2025
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30pm
Sundays at 2:30pm

Performed at Theatre Downtown

Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at Nationals in Tampa Bay. A play about ambition, growing up, and how to find our souls in the heat of it all.

Featuring: Deztonie Cunningham, Hannah Rice, Marlena Elliot, Isaiah Pierce, A.G. Crist, Holly Dikeman, Khushi Shah, Penny Thomas, and Nick Pappas

Clare Barron is a playwright and performer from Wenatchee, Washington. Her play Dance Nation recently received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in May 2018 and subsequently its UK premiere at the Almeida Theatre in London. It was a 2019 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and is the recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and The Relentless Award established in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Other plays include: You Got Older (Page 73; Steppenwolf) which received two Obie Awards for Playwriting and Performance, a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Play, and was a Susan Smith Blackburn finalist and the #1 most-recommended play on the Kilroys' List; I’ll Never Love Again (The Bushwick Starr); and Baby Screams Miracle (Clubbed Thumb; Woolly Mammoth). She is the recipient of a Whiting Award for Drama, the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award at The Vineyard, and the Page 73 Fellowship; and is a member of New Dramatists.