Stoop Stories

Local Premiere



STARTS SEP 3, 2021


By Dael Orlandersmith
Directed by Elizabeth Carter

View the Stoop Stories Program here:


Combining heightened prose, poetry, and music playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith crafts a solo show with the rhythm and punch of big band jazz. From a stoop in Harlem, audiences meet the diversity of voices that populate the narrator’s NYC neighborhood. The variety of characters are drawn from Orlandersmith’s personal life and limitless imagination. She introduces us to an elderly Polish Holocaust survivor who has a chance meeting with Billie Holiday, a young poet struggling with addiction, a teenage Puerto Rican immersed in counter culture, a washed-up rock star, and a seventy-year-old New Yorker on a pilgrimage to the West Village to see Nina Simone. Aurora presents a new production of this compelling play with a local actor and team.

“Orlandersmith is one of a generation of gifted solo performers — among them Anna Deavere Smith, Danny Hoch, Sarah Jones and Heather Raffo — who demolished the fourth wall of American middle-class theater."
— Charlotte Stoudt, Los Angeles Times



Aurora is known for its intimacy because of our thrust stage. And because of that intimacy -- combined with the limitations of Actor's Equity Association's guidelines for COVID-19 safety -- we were forced to make the decision to present Stoop Stories as a filmed production.



“As I Walk I Remember”
Reflections on Stoop Stories
By Dawn Monique Williams

Read the article here



Stoop Stories Post-Show Conversations

Sunday, September 19 at 4pm PDT
Saturday, September 25 at 12pm PDT
Friday, October 1 at 5pm PDT

Please join us for a discussion of Aurora's production of Stoop Stories by Dael Orlandersmith. Participants are welcome to join any and or all discussions prior to or following a viewing of the play. Discussion host, Dawn Monique Williams, may be joined by the actor, director, community members, and or local storytellers.

Combining heightened prose, poetry, and music playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith crafts a solo show with the rhythm and punch of big band jazz. From a stoop in Harlem, audiences meet the diversity of voices that populate the narrator’s NYC neighborhood. The variety of characters are drawn from Orlandersmith’s personal life and limitless imagination. She introduces us to an elderly Polish Holocaust survivor who has a chance meeting with Billie Holiday, a young poet struggling with addiction, a teenage Puerto Rican immersed in counter-culture, a washed-up rock star, and a seventy-year-old New Yorker on a pilgrimage to the West Village to see Nina Simone. Aurora presents a new production of this compelling play with a local actor and team.

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