Playwright, actor and S.J. Quinney College of Law Professor Debora Threedy will debut her new play, One Big Union, August 12, 2016 at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. After many years appearing on stage in Salt Lake City, including at Salt Lake Acting Company, Threedy turned to playwriting. She wrote and performed a one-woman show, Desert Wife, which toured the state with funding from the Utah Humanities Council. She has had a number of plays produced by Plan B Theatre in Salt Lake City, most recently The Third Crossing, which also was one of the winners of the Fratti-Newman New Political Play Contest in New York. This is her second opportunity to work with the New American Playwrights Project, having in 2006 workshopped her play Nemo 1934 (later produced by Plan B as The End of the Horizon).
One Big Union is about Joe Hill. Was Hill a union agitator executed by the State of Utah in 1915, a murderer or an innocent man? Considered a martyr by many, his songs at the time envisioned gender and racial equality and criticized the gross income disparities of his time. Today, he remains an enigmatic folk hero, but beyond the mythology lies a larger story of protest, still relevant a century after his death.
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