WITNESS
"Every person you meet, every person you see, that person could be you." James Baldwin
WITNESS is a play that focuses more on our similarities rather than our differences by taking two families, one White and one Black, living in two cities, Detroit and Harlem, and telling one story, the same story, simultaneously on stage that changes the conversation in the room from one about race to one about people and our shared humanity.
Audiences have called it: "riveting, compelling, even haunting."
29-Hour AEA Reading 2024 (l-r): Lillias White - Chalia La Tour - Blake Morris - Mario Sprouse, Producer - Mary Miller, Author - Pat Golden, Director
(n/p) Mary Testa - Jane Bruce - Adam Couperwaite Rehearsal NYC Feb. 2024
AEA 29-Hour Reading All Star Cast NYC, NY
Featuring Tony Award winners: Lillias White & Mary Testa
WITNESS - The story of two families (one White, one Black), living in two cities (Detroit and Harlem) in one play that happens simultaneously on stage that changes how we talk about race, class, and social justice today.
- TWO FAMILIES
- TWO CITIES
- ONE PLAY
AUDIENCE REVIEWS: You have created magic when you put these two very VERY antagonistic historic, American, and archetypal groups onstage together. Their experience, which seems like one thing, is so much more complex than that one incident. Brilliant! You didn't just succeed in expanding the story, you expanded the WAY we have a coversation about "what if" and the questions of race and class that are far too often separated in our minds in this country. Minka Wilkz - Actor, Singer, Writer - Atlanta, GA
DEDICATED TO GORDON PARKS: "Who challenged me as a playwright and gave me permission to writer the stories I heard in my head." Mary Miller
29-Hour AEA Reading 2024 Cast: Lillias White* (Hadestown) Mary Testa* (Oklahoma) Jane Bruce* (Harry Potter) Chalia La Tour* (Slave Play) Blake Morris* ( Ain't No Mo) Adam Couperthwaite (No Snake in This Grass)
Directed by: Pat Golden (ONAJE)
Casting Director: Katja Zarolinski CSA
Production Stage Manager: Kai Stanton*
General Management: Sharon Fallon Productions
Producer: Sounds of the City Music & Mario Sprouse
* Actors and Stage Managers appear courtesy of Actors' Equity Association
NY Foundation for the Arts City Corp Grant
- NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS CITY CORP GRANT Recipient 2021
- ARTS MINISTRY MARBLE COLLEGIATE CHURCH PRESENTATION New York City, NY. Directed Pat Golden
"Congratulations on a brilliant play!"
ARTS MINISTRY MARBLE COLLEGIATE CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY, NY
"On Thursday, October 28, 2021 at the Historic Marble Collegiate Church in New York City there was a staged reading of this powerful and timely play WITNESS written by Mary Miller. It was directed by Pat Golden and sponsored by The Theatre Upstairs - Downstairs at Marble. WITNESS is an important and necessary play in this era of divisiveness. Mary Miller's narrative technique is genius and something I will never forget."
Arts Ministry at Marble Collegiate Church
Picture Credit: Douglas Powers
Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference
EUGENE O'NEILL PLAYWRIGHTS CONFERENCE 2020 Semifinalist
In April 2020 Mary Miller's play WITNESS was honored as a semifinalist in the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, where her voice as a writer was given a "full-throated endorsement" by the O'Neill committee and "her ideas recognized as vital to the continual evolution of American Theater."
Wendy C. Goldberg - Artistic Director
Lexy Leuszler - Literary Manager