Elevate Winter Series - Part 2: The Morality of Broccoli
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The play
"The Morality of Broccoli," a hilarious play with all-too-real moral dilemmas of consumer consciousness, environmental health and justice.
About this Event
Elevate Theatre Company provides space for audiences and artists to explore health and well-being through the art of storytelling. Our Winter Series aims to Redefine the Stage by hosting a series of digital events that explore major public health topics. We engage audiences through performative storytelling and then provide a panel discussion post performance for further exploration.
The Elevate Winter Series Part 2: Health of Our Planet, People & Pocketbooks, is right around the corner! Join us for another engaging piece of theater with the brilliant and hilarious play The Morality of Broccoli , written and performed by Mr. Jamie Roach.
Play Synopsis:
A real-life date has been arranged in the year 2020, a major feat! There is only a quick stop at the grocery store standing between a conscientious shopper and a night with the possible love of his life. Should be simple. Should take ten minutes tops...
After the performance, Elevate hosts a conversation about consumer consciousness, climate change, and environmental health and justice.
Christina D. Eskridge
Director
Christina D. Eskridge, Founder and Executive Director of Elevate Theatre Company, is thrilled to be directing this iteration of The Morality of Broccoli. Pulling from her background as a performing artist, teaching artist, director and public health professional, holding a Master’s Degree in Public Health from UC Berkeley, Christina is working to fuse her two passions of health and theater together. Additionally, Christina is producing this 4-part Elevate Winter Series to Redefine the Stage, ensuring we continue experiencing live theater, in a socially distant and innovative manner. Now more than ever, we need stories to entertain, inspire, educate and call us to action. Christina is excited to ELEVATE this story, bring together public health and advocacy experts and engage in dialogue with the audience.
ALBERTO DENIS
(BA in Theater/Dance, Rhode Island College, summa cum laude)
Stage Manager
A company member of Third Rail Projects since 2011, Mr. Denis has been an original collaborating cast member in several of the company’s preeminent works including their Bessie’s Awards winning “Then She Fell”. .Most recently he completed a 37 sold out run of “Confection” commissioned by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC in 2019. Throughout this time he has also supported his burgeoning career as international male burlesque sensation GoGo Gadget, with featured performances at almost 7 years of the New York Boylesk Festivals, featured in the 2012, 2013 & 2016 London Burlesque Festivals, performances in Boston, New York City, Denver, Toronto, Paris, Stockholm and Vienna. Mr. Denis is a hyphenate and has served as Technical Director, Stage Manager, Producer, Sound Engineer, Theater Electrician, and Guest Professor within the Dance and Theater sectors for the past 20 years.
The Artist
Jamie Roach
Playwright / Performer
Jamie Roach is an actor, playwright and facilitator, whose work centers on re-imagining how people can connect. A graduate of NYU in Applied Theater, and Circle in the Square Theatre School on Broadway, Jamie has been a collaborative performing artist in AFTER (The Public Theater UTR), NERVOUS/SYSTEM (BAM, NWF) Beneath The Gavel, (Feinstein’s/54 Below), and Pagliacci (The Met Opera House). As a playwright, Jamie has had four plays produced in New York, including a work featured in the production Play/Date (prod. by Blindspot Collective), an immersive show heralded by the NYTimes as “thoughtful drama,” and at Barrington Stage Company’s 10x10 Festival. Also, The Morality of Broccoli first produced at NY Fringe (by Naked Light Productions), and The City, produced by Alive Worldwide, (aliveworldwide.org), an organization Jamie co-created to promote human connectivity through creativity. Jamie also works as a Teaching Artist and Corporate Coach with clients such as Disney, New Victory Theater, PwC, and Lincoln Center Theater. Jamie is also co-founder of Queer Playback Theatre that honors and brings light to Queer stories. www.jamieroach.com
The Panelists
Ami R.
Zota, ScD, MS
Ami Zota is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health at the George Washington University Milken School of Public Health. Dr. Zota’s work seeks to secure environmental justice and improve health equity through advancements in science, policy, and clinical practice. Her research identifies novel pathways linking social disparities, environmental exposures, and reproductive and children’s health. She received a career development award from the National Institutes of Health for her research on environmental health disparities and was recently recognized as a Pioneer Under 40 in Environmental Public Health by the Collaborative on Health and the Environment. She is currently an Associate Editor of Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology and on the Editorial Boards of Environmental Health Perspectives and Environmental Epigenetics.
Heather Tallis PhD
Heather Tallis is a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health and Visiting Scholar at University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. Heather has over 15 years of experience providing leadership to research and impact organizations around the world. She led science for The Nature Conservancy that underpins their global conservation agenda now touching down in 70 countries. A believer in collaboration, Heather has founded partnerships, including the Bridge Collaborative and Wicked Econ, that have changed natural resource management policy, directed major funds to sustainable investments, and produced high impact scientific publications. Heather’s research and advising with communities, governments, private sector actors, non-profit leaders and foundations in 20 countries has described novel environment-health linkages and designed strategies that can aid both conservation and human health.
Molly Braverman
Molly Braverman is the Director of the Broadway Green Alliance. She previously served as the Managing Director of Theatre Horizon, a non-profit professional theatre company in Norristown, PA. She has worked as a Stage Manager on Broadway, Touring Broadway, and regionally, having spent three years on the road with the National Tour of Wicked and continuing to serve as a substitute Stage Manager on Wicked and Hamilton. She founded the Philadelphia Green Theatre Alliance, a regional chapter of the Broadway Green Alliance, was trained by former Vice President Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader, and is a graduate of Columbia University.
Laura Delhauer is the Creator of Naked Light, a theatre and media company merging environmentalism and creative storytelling. Naked Light's premier project has been the ongoing HI MOM! Monologues from the Characters of Climate Change, a living, breathing, and ever evolving project empowering playwrights to amplify the countless individual stories within the complex conversation of environmental crises we currently face. Laura is also a plant-based chef who is passionate about making healthy sustainable food accessible to all. She co-authored The Vegucated Family Table, which is the first ever cookbook for parents wanting to raise their children entirely plant-based for health, environmental and/or ethical reasons.
Resources
The Elevate Family is growing and we are so thankful for the talent and creativity that has helped us redefine the stage this winter.
To Jamie Roach, playwright and performer, your work is a gift. Thank you for the humor and humanity you've brought to The Morality of Broccoli!
Special thanks to Alberto Denis, our fantastic SM.
Deep gratitude for our incredible panelists for sharing their expertise and experiences with our community to educate, inspire and provoke action among us all.
A huge thank you to the environmental health and advocacy organizations doing work to support our communities.
Finally, those behind the scenes:
Ugo Chukwu, thank you for your amazing voicemail voice.
Kwame Brandt-Pierce thanks for scoring our grocery store footage. What a journey you take us on with sound.
Wesley Wells, you've done it again and we are in your debt for another stellar job with programming and social media support.
As always, thank you to our incredible donors who help make it all possible.