Z Space

Word for Word's Off the Page staged reading series is the public's first look at pieces we are considering for upcoming productions. With a public staged reading of a short story, we invite audiences to see the steps of our process of bringing a work from the page to the stage in the Word for Word style. After the reading, the audience is encouraged to engage in a conversation with us, which gives valuable feedback as we decide on the next steps of a work's development.

There is a suggested donation of $25 to help pay our artists and cover the production costs of Off the Page series. You can donate online here (or at the venue).

Please visit the Off the Page Archive to view previous years’ stories.

We typically release seat reservations about four weeks prior to a given performance. Be sure to check back here to get your seats.

Off the Page - 2024 series

Upcoming Shows

Monday, October 21, 7pm
Z Below
”Annunciation” by Lauren Groff
Directed by Joel Mullennix

Award winning author, Lauren Groff, brings us a tale of a young woman who moves from New England to Palo Alto, taking her first steps into post-college adulthood. As she tries to discover who she will become, the “god and animal within” fight to define her. Groff was named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME in 2024.

Part of the Litquake Festival.

Previous Shows

Tuesday, April 23rd, 7pm
Town Hall Theatre Company, Lafayette, CA
”The Coast of Leitrim” by Kevin Barry
Directed by Paul Finocchiaro

Word For Word is thrilled to take a trip to the East Bay, bringing their Off the Page reading series to Town Hall Theatre Company in Lafayette.

Our performance features "The Coast of Leitrim" by Kevin Barry, who epitomizes the earthy and sometimes jarringly poetic vocabulary for which Ireland is particularly well known. In this modern romance, a solitary Irish man who, finding himself smitten with a young Polish woman, falls down a Google-fueled rabbit hole, while falling deeper for her.

Cast: Ryan Tasker*+, Rosie Hallett*+, Joel Mullennix*+, Stephanie Hunt*+, John Flanagan*

*Member, AEA
+Word for Word Core Company Member

Monday April 15, 7pm at Z Below
Three Stories by Ron Rash:
"Sad Man," "The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth," and "Hard Times"
Directed by Amy Kossow

Join us for our latest installment of Off the Page.

"The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth" – With a comedic touch this contemporary Appalachian tale reveals the lessons of bad marriages, weak foundations, and questionable religious observances, as well as the hard-won unexpected surprise of new love.

In “Sad Man in the Sky,” a crumpled man approaches a helicopter operator and offers money to be taken up for a pass over a certain neighborhood. The man is circumspect in his reasons, and while in the air he requests that the operator hover over a house so he can look down from the sky upon children he loves but cannot see.

"Hard Times", the lead story in Ron Rash's 2010 Frank O'Connor Prize winning collection of short stories Burning Bright is truly a marvel, a work that comes from deep knowledge, compassion, and an unfiltered view of American Appalachia of the 1930's.  The story focuses on isolated, marginalized families with no one to speak for them.  A dispute between neighbors over some missing eggs leads to a heartbreaking conclusion.

Cast: Molly Benson*+, John Flanagan* ensemble, Delia MacDougall*+, Joel Mullennix*+, Annie Moore, Warren David Keith*, Nancy Shelby*+, Ryan Tasker*+

*Member, AEA
+Word for Word Core Company Member

Monday January 29, 7pm
Z Below
The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster
Directed by Gendell Hing-Hernández

Word for Word's Off the Page series is back, featuring E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops."

In 2020, Word for Word explored an audio adaptation of this tale, with our podcast, Word for WordCAST  during a time when our primary mode of communication was through screens and telecalls. Now, in 2024, we invite you to join us for a live, Off the Page reading of this story, providing a unique perspective in the evolving landscape of Artificial Intelligence.

“Only connect” was the central moral imperative in the works of writer E. M. Forster, who understood and expressed better than any writer of his time the difficulties of achieving connection. Just one year after publication of “A Room with A View” in 1908, Forster wrote "The Machine Stops" in part as a reaction to the utopian works of H.G. Wells, which celebrated the advances of the machine age. For Forster, the rise of the machine was seen as a furthering of the disconnect between man and nature and the future world he imagined over a hundred years ago is eerily similar to the direction our world is heading today. A world in which, “the clumsy system of public gatherings had been abandoned”, and the custom of touching one another “had become obsolete”, a world in which humanity communicates chiefly through the cyber working of The Machine.

Cast
Carla Gallardo - The Attendant/Ensemble
Susan Harloe* - Vashti
David Everett Moore* - Kuno
Brian Rivera* ** - The Speaker/Ensemble
Ryan Tasker* **- The Machine/Ensemble

Stage Manager - Karen Runk*

*Member, AEA
**Member, Word for Word Core Company

Monday, September 9, 7pm
Z Space’s Steindler Stage
“Paradise” by Yxta Maya Murray
Directed by JoAnne Winter

In Yxta Maya Murray’s “Paradise” we follow Fernanda, a woman of Mexican and Native descent, as she navigates finding safety for herself, her young daughter Jessie, and her stern and imposing father-in-law Wesley during the Camp Fire in Paradise, California. The tragedy of the fire is magnified by her contentious and problematic relationship with this affluent man of fixed, racist beliefs and a stubborn will to stay put in his beloved home.

This performance of Off the Page confronts the escalating crisis of wildfires, both in California and globally, highlighting how these disasters disproportionately impact society's most structurally marginalized communities. It serves as a powerful companion to Z Space’s workshop of Wildfire, a new concert-play that delves into these critical themes.

Cast: Linda Amayo-Hassan*, Sheila Balter+, Carla Gallardo, Dov Hassan, Gendell Hing-Hernández*, Julian Lopez Morillas, Joel Mullennix*+, Nancy Shelby*, Jeunée Simon*, Monica Slater

*Member, AEA
+Word for Word Core Company Member