U of A M.F.A. playwright candidate Lauren Ferebee’s play, GOODS, has been selected as the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival’s 2021 recipient of the Planet Earth Arts Playwriting Award as well as nominated for the festival’s National Partners in American Theatre Award. 

Additionally, GOODS will make its virtual world premiere on Wednesday, May 5, at Artemisia Theatre in Chicago.

The Planet Earth Arts Playwriting Award, created in partnership with the Planet Earth Arts Foundation, is given to plays that discuss sustainability and address the most urgent environmental and social justice issues of our time through the lens of arts and human creativity. 

The National Partners in American Theatre Award is selected annually from among eight nominations from across the U.S. and recognizes the year’s best-written, best-crafted script with the strongest writer’s voice. 

GOODS will run virtually at Artemisia Theatre Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. from May 5-30 and is available to audiences worldwide. Tickets cost $30 and can be purchased online. 

The play centers on two intergalactic trash collectors, both women, one Black, one white, in the year 2100. Marla and Sam are celebrating their 20th anniversary of working together as interplanetary trash collectors. 

Their spaceship might be small and dingy, but it keeps them from dealing with sinking cities, an out-of-control refugee crisis, and their own personal histories. However, as they head toward the finish of their anniversary route, an unexpected job forces them to confront the problems and choices of the world they've left behind and their relationship to one another.

“All civilizations have trash. It's a unifying characteristic. That means every civilization has garbage collectors,” Ferebee said, referring to her inspiration for GOODS. “I've always been a science fiction fan, so with GOODS I wanted to bring the excitement and newness of space travel into a play with two women who see space travel as the most routine, mundane task.” 

Lauren Ferebee, U of A Theatre M.F.A. candidate and author of the award-winning new play GOODS, which makes its virtual streaming premiere May 5 with Artemisia Theatre.

“What does space mean to Marla and Sam? What happens when we run out of space? I thought perhaps by looking forward, just a little, we could wonder at how progress and devastation go hand and hand, and maybe think a little more deeply about who progress benefits, who gets left behind, and why,” Ferebee said.

GOODS is directed by Chicago stage legend E. Faye Butler, while Artemisia founder and artistic director Julie Proudfoot is the producer and will perform the role of Marla. Shariba Rivers will appear as Sam.

John Walch, head of the M.F.A. program in playwriting in the U of A’s Department of Theatre, said the attention Ferebee and GOODS are receiving is well-deserved.

“The play is so smart, moving and reflective of Lauren’s care for humans’ impact on each other and on the planet — or in this play, actually the whole galaxy,” Walch said. “Plus, Lauren has been a terrific graduate student so, in this year of ‘no live theatre,’ it’s great to have cause to celebrate Lauren and her incredible work.”

Ferebee, a third-year M.F.A. candidate in the Department of Theatre, is set to graduate this spring.

Ferebee’s plays have been developed across the United States. Most recently, her play Brilliance was featured as part of Boomerang Theatre Company’s First Flight Festival in New York City, and Every Waiting Heart (Artemisia Fall Festival 2018 winner, O’Neill semifinalist) had a reading in Fall 2019 at TheatreSquared. Her play Wild Eden (semifinalist, BAPF 2020) was developed in Fall 2020 at the U of A.

Ferebee earned her B.F.A. at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and is a current M.F.A. candidate at the U of A, where she started GOODS in her second year. For more information, visit laurenferebee.com.

About Artemisia Theatre: Artemisia Theatre was founded to share women’s untold stories. Since 2011, through productions of classic and all-new feminist plays, Artemisia has created career-altering opportunities for African American, Latinx, Asian, Arab and Native American (ALAANA), Caucasian and LGBTQ theatre artists. Artemisia enriches Chicago’s culture by taking creative risks, achieving artistic excellence and engaging the audience directly in unique performances and after-show discussions that inspire compassion and social justice for women. Artemisia’s leadership is 100 percent women. For tickets and more information, visit artemisiatheatre.org.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas’ economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the top 3% of U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.